“If Not Now, When? SDLP Leader Claire Hanna on Gaza, Sanctions, and the UK’s Duty”

In a forthright interview, Claire Hanna says UK recognition of Palestine is meaningful but belated, urges the end of military co-operation with Israel, and argues that the UK must use the same sanctions “toolkit” it deployed against Russia. 

By Jessica Toal | September 25, 2025

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BELFAST– Claire Hanna doesn’t waste words. Asked to trace the thread running through the SDLP’s stance on Gaza, the party leader reaches for first principles rather than party lines: a humanitarian upbringing, a decade in international development, and the unglamorous discipline of protecting civilians in war. 

“The through line,” she says, “is the immediate protection of life - and a lasting, just resolution, ideally a two-state solution where Israelis and Palestinians can enjoy peace and security.”

That ethic has made Hanna one of Westminster’s most insistent voices on Gaza. In June, she confronted the prime minister on the floor of the House: when would the UK help stop “this genocide” and recognise Palestine? The latter has since happened. The former, she argues, remains unanswered. 

‘A day late and a dollar short’

Recognition of a Palestinian state has long been SDLP policy - Hanna co-sponsored a recognition bill in her first year at Westminster. But the urgency, she stresses, has sharpened as “there increasingly [is] not a state to protect.”

Her frustration is aimed squarely at ministers. The UK, she underscores, “have been sorely lacking - a day late and a dollar short - throughout this humanitarian crisis.” Beyond words, she lists tangible failures: a threadbare humanitarian visa route that even families with “immediate relatives in Gaza” cannot practically access, and a default to rhetoric over leverage.

“Words haven’t worked,” Hanna says. “Sanctions and isolation are the terms - and bluntly, the removal of military cooperation.”

The law – and the ‘G-word’

Pressed on the UK’s obligations under international law after the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures, Hanna is careful to separate her political instincts from legal parsing. “I’m not a lawyer,” she notes, but argues that the UK’s reluctance to use the word “genocide” looks less like principle than “fear of the obligations that would follow.”

For her, the more compelling argument is strategic as well as moral. If the stated aim is Israel’s long-term security, “there’s no possible belief that this is strategic to secure that,” she asserts, noting that doubts are being voiced not just by “opposition politicians many hundreds of miles away,” but by senior Israeli military figures too. The U.S., she contends, remains “the major and last hurdle.”

What would save lives now

Hanna’s near-term prescription is blunt: stop military co-operation and start using sanctions with the same clarity the UK marshalled against Russia after their invasion of Ukraine. 

“We know what full solidarity looks like,” she points out. “The diplomatic hits, sanctions on individuals, financial sanctions - the UK has the toolkit and has failed to deploy it in the case of Israel.”

Pointing to a recent ministerial claim that UK defence exports had been reduced to “1%”, Hanna’s retort is scalpel-sharp: “One per cent facilitation of genocide is still facilitation of a genocide.”

She backs targeted sanctions on Israeli cabinet members “who are complicit,” noting the UK has already sanctioned some individuals involved in extremist settlement violence in the West Bank - proof, she argues, that the government “believe those to be a valid tool” when it chooses to act. 

Complicity and political will

Would ministers be complicit if they continue to authorise arms or components used in Gaza while the UN steps up its scrutiny of third-state duties? Hanna declines to play courtroom counsel, but doesn’t dodge the ethical bottom line. 

“You can dance on the head of a pin,” she observes. “But people know values-based leadership when they see it. They’re entitled to expect ministers to do everything within their power to press towards an outcome. We haven’t seen that. If not now, then when?”

The Westminster temperature has shifted

One striking claim from Hanna is how far sentiment has moved across the Commons. Strip away the set-piece front-bench lines, she states, and “every Labour MP who’s got up, every Lib Dem” - and even Conservative voices - have increasingly echoed the calls for restraints, then sanctions. 

“In the early days, people were rightly responding to the immediate pain after October 7,” she acknowledges. “But it’s increasingly rare to hear voices not calling for restraint. The shift reflects public opinion: for many MPs it’s the number one issue in their inbox.”

Hanna bristles at the old insinuation that only certain constituencies care. “There was a misconception: ‘Do you have a big Muslim constituency?’ Ireland is one of the most pro-Palestine countries in the world, yes, but this isn’t about demographic arithmetic. It’s about what the human spirit can tolerate.”

Recognition that matters - and hurts

On the UK’s recognition of Palestine, Hanna’s response is layered: gratitude, realism, anger. 

“It clearly had meaning for people,” she notes, recalling conversations with the Palestinian ambassador and with families in South Belfast - “pretending and living,” as one put it - who count days between news of loved ones. 

To call recognition “too little, too late” risks souring progress, she concedes. But the symbolism will only bite if it becomes scaffolding for policy: sanctions, legal obligations honoured, and lifelines widened, not just promised. 

Hope, in her telling, is scarce but not extinguished. “I don’t know how people in Gaza get through the day,” she says. “If people can get even a shred of hope that Palestine can be preserved, they’ll cling to it.”

Hanna’s argument, ultimately, is disarmingly simple: measure the UK by what it has already proved it can do. When Moscow invaded Ukraine, the UK moved money, law, and diplomacy at speed. If the same levers exist now, and ministers say they do, the question she throws back across the dispatch box doubles as the interview’s coda. 

If not now, when?