On September 8th, British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced to a packed House of Commons—with the Prime Minister and Cabinet seated next to him—that the UK would be enacting a series of measures in relation to Israeli illegal practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. PM Andy Burnham reiterated the significance of this new policy announcement during Prime Minister’s Question Time in Parliament the following day.
Despite the well-founded frustration that this had taken far too long and remains insufficient, it is correct to see this as a potential watershed moment in UK policy, a feeling shared by many who watched proceedings that day in Parliament.
It marks a belated shift from rhetoric and symbolism (make no mistake, the act of recognizing Palestine without tangible follow-up belongs in the symbolism category) to actionable consequential measures which can reframe UK-Israel relations.
It is important to put this in the context of a theory of change—how this can be translated over time into violations of international law carrying consequences; Palestinian rights eventually being respected; how the politics of mass public mobilization can have impact; and how this can also influence other third parties—while acknowledging the cracks and caveats and need for more to be done. Dare I say, advancing peace.
I discussed a lot of these themes and others in an in-depth discussion with Owen Jones this week, which can be viewed here. Some of the issues were also picked up in interviews with CNN, Novara, Middle East Eye and AJ+, amongst others.
Key elements of Miliband’s new UK policy announcement
Readers will probably already be familiar with what was set out, but it’s worth briefly highlighting the central components. First, the UK (after more than two years) aligned itself and endorsed the key ruling of the International Court of Justice from July 19, 2024, announcing that “the official view of the British government is that the occupation is unlawful”.
That designation carries implications. In introducing practical measures to reset the British economic relationship with illegal Israeli settlements, the government committed itself not only to introducing an import ban on goods, but also to a “new comprehensive sanctions regime” that will include taking “action against specific companies and individuals who provide services such as construction, infrastructure financing, or real estate for settlement expansion”. Miliband stated the following: “so to those who finance or facilitate illegal settlements, let me say this to you, you will face the full force of UK sanctions”.
The UK acknowledged that ethnic cleansing was taking place in the West Bank and expanded existing limitations on UK arm sales, promising an end to “exports that materially contribute to the occupation, and in effect a double lock against arms sales”. To again quote Miliband: “this means the ban on such exports will now remain as long as the occupation persists”.
On Gaza, the UK position was not to intervene in the ICJ Genocide Convention case brought by South Africa, while supporting the right of the court to make a determination and a commitment to respect whatever that outcome was, while Miliband, in quoting the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry, acknowledged the increasing evidence of war crimes having been committed by Israel. And there was a commitment “to extending the global human rights sanctions regime to increase accountability and to target those responsible for violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza”.
Why this policy shift matters
a) Chipping away at impunity:
Israel and its supporters have, for decades, been successful in ensuring that no tangible consequence flow from its illegal actions—in maintaining a prevailing culture of impunity. This is in spite of the fact that the absence of costs and consequences have, predictably enough, facilitated an ever more relentless Israeli expansion into Palestinian land, crushing of Palestinian well-being and rights and thereby guaranteeing that a Western policy of zero accountability facilitated the negation of the very policy they claimed to support (namely Palestinian statehood alongside Israel).
Under a regime of impunity, historically and with new degrees of intensity under the current government, Israel has shaped and determined the fabric of Palestinian life according to a rhythm of expulsions, exploitation of land and resources, development of infrastructure and closures/movement restrictions that serve the settler population rather than Palestinians.
As the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem notes, settlements are “the single most important factor in shaping life in the West Bank”. That now includes 103 new settlements being approved by the current government, including new tenders being issued for construction in the notorious E1 settlement corridor separating north from south West Bank and from Jerusalem.
The acknowledgement of the unlawful nature of the entirety of the occupation creates other openings for policy follow-up and legal challenges, as does that new double lock on arms sales. This is all the more significant as it comes at a time when certain European countries, notably Germany and Greece, are doubling down in embedding their weapons procurement and development programs with Israeli systems and companies.
If pursued according to the logic of the announcement, Israel will face an increasingly consequential choice—first of all, does it accept to continue designating rules of origin of settlement products, or risk a broader crisis in trade relations with the UK? And more significantly, how will it ringfence its financial system from their all-encompassing role in making financially possible the illegal settlements? By reversing the reality of impunity and recalibrating the cost ledger for Israel, such measures would also create space for a perhaps different debate inside Israel itself.
Imposing accountability and shifting the incentive structure for Israel does not go from zero to hundred overnight. What is though particularly significant about the measures announced (once they are implemented) is that they extend beyond the financially rather inconsequential trade in settlement goods to include financial services, products, investments, mortgages, the banking system, etc. That is where the rubber potentially hits the road.
b) The political significance:
This has implications which go beyond the UK and carry potential lessons for elsewhere. While Israel’s provocations have intensified, the shift which made this announcement possible really happened in UK politics. The new British Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, brings a different style and political approach. Without going too granular, Starmer (even before becoming PM, in many respects) alienated a significant cohort of the existing and potential Labour voting public, and never really attempted to win them back.
The Starmer team approach to Gaza, in particular, and more broadly on Palestine/Israel, featured prominently in that dynamic. Burnham simply stopped denying that reality and is doing things to recapture lost Labour support, this included. By having Ed Miliband in the Foreign Office, this government has an experienced politician with strong convictions, commitments and leadership capacity to run point on the policy. Miliband personally deserves huge credit for what happened this week. And the fact that it seems to have landed well politically should give the impetus to keep going.
Crucial to that is to understand that the political space for this week’s moves was created by the mass public mobilization in Britain, including the mass marches and protests, the constant advocacy and real shifts in overall British public opinion. Of course, this announcement was not everything the protests called for, far, far from it. But the political strategic move has to be to pocket this win, confident that a continued push from the public is what can continue to impact what happens next, how far these measures are implemented, and then go further.
That can also send a political signal well beyond the British Isles, to other polities and protest movements in parts of Europe, and not least to the Democrat Party in the U.S., some of whose leadership remains in deep denial as to the public political saliency of being able to pass the authenticity test and be credible in its policy on Palestine/Israel.
c) Leading and providing cover:
Casting one’s mind back to British recognition of Palestine a year ago, it is worth recalling that that came in the wake of an announcement by France to recognize Palestine and conspicuously lacked any practical measures by way of embedding recognition in a broader policy.
This announcement is different. The UK this time was the one leading and building a coalition whereby simultaneously France and Canada announced the intention to take measures regarding settlement goods, as did nine other European countries, acknowledging that a handful had already acted in this manner.
By being the initiating party and going further than others, the UK was putting its chin out if there were any potential hit to be taken from Israel, the U.S. or elsewhere, thereby providing cover for others (and simultaneously lessening the prospect of retaliation, political safety in numbers).
The UK also went further than the statement put out by the collective nine—the others have referenced goods, but not financial services and products, for instance. The fact that the UK is no longer in the EU also allows it to take measures without having to build a pan-European consensus. But UK actions can have the effect of influencing dynamics elsewhere, increasing political pressure on certain EU states to do more—that could help tip the balance inside the EU to itself finally put some of these sanctioning measures into play. So, this has the potential for impact to be magnified.
d) The significance of the timing:
The success of Israel and its lobby in perpetuating impunity has frequently fallen back on an argument around timing—of course, from their perspective, there is never a good time—but the argument helps provide cover for spineless political actors. A major part of the effort to scupper UK measures on this occasion fell back on using the timing argument.
We were told, for instance, that this would not only interfere in Israeli elections, but strengthen Netanyahu’s hand. The UK government did the calculation and thankfully rebuffed this nonsense. Anyone who thinks that Netanyahu will get his mojo back by claiming he’s the tough guy in the face of an always hostile world (Antisemitic, he will spuriously claim of course) is not paying attention to Israeli electoral dynamics and what is already baked in.
Truth is, this UK move will most likely have limited to zero impact, albeit some of the opposition tried to score points in further blaming Netanyahu for the negative turn in Israel’s international standing now having entered the zone of practical implications.
One reason that part of the Israel echo chamber was so desperate to prevent this move now is that, in hoping for an opposition victory in Israel’s election, there have been intensified efforts to claim that the only problem is Netanyahu and his Ben-Gvir/Smotrich allies. As if there is not a deeper and more long-standing systemic Israeli policy in play. It also ignores the fact that none of the Zionist opposition parties are questioning the fundamental tenets of Israel’s illegal actions, none have questioned the continued existence of settlements or the crimes in Gaza, and two states (were it desirable) is simply not on the ballot.
But there was a hope that if they could just get through to the election without consequence, and if Netanyahu were to fall, then the narrative could take hold of problem solved, nothing to see here, drop any question of accountability. There will be an issue to address if there is a change in government in Israel—there should be no suspension of these measures unless and until Israel desists from the violations of international law which the policy comes in response to. There could be a temptation to possibly condition some implementation on incremental shifts in Israeli policy—but that is for later.
But…
Given the long and torrid history of avoiding meaningful, practical political action on this issue, there is a great deal of understandable scepticism swirling as to what will be the fate of these measures in the implementation phase.
There is an equally well-founded frustration at the pretence underpinning the policy—namely that there is a settler economy distinct from that of Israel itself. It is, of course, the State of Israel that has and continues to forcibly expel and displace Palestinians, that seizes and redesignates Palestinian land, that controls resources, that builds the infrastructure, the connectivity to water, energy, sewage, roads, etc. for settlements, and that expelled the Palestinians in the Nakba, while rejecting return and restitution. And the list could go on.
As long as the international political framing of this question remains centred around two states then maximizing these kinds of measures is what the political traffic can bear. It is true that there is not a recognized national Palestinian liberation movement advocating a one-state outcome—shorn of the current apartheid regime—based on ANC Freedom Charter-style equality for all, including Israeli Jews. That is also the central point of the current framing in international law—that any complicity in the illegality of the occupation must cease.
But until that framing shifts, an awful lot can still be accomplished—in other words, taking the ending of complicity in the illegal occupation to its logical conclusion (including for instance in the banking sector as noted), threatens a serious unravelling inside the Israeli system and places it in front of genuinely tough dilemmas—if the implementation is serious.
I think that is partly why most of the Palestinian and Palestinian adjacent solidarity movement response has been to cautiously welcome these moves, to constructively acknowledge the important step this constitutes, and to emphasize the implementation and going further.
As for counter reactions—the U.S. administration has thus far been quite muted. Israel’s countermeasures have centred around targeting UK-Palestine relations, removing the UK from frameworks which actually co-opt third-party states into additional forms of complicity (expelling the UK from the questionable practice of training Palestinian police and the even more questionable CMCC mechanism to launder the atrocities in Gaza). Israel also banned individual MPs. All of this is likely just to strengthen British resolve.
What might age least well from the Foreign Secretary’s announcement is the way in which he offered what was essentially a liberal Zionist framing—considering two states the only outcome, drawing that ultimately unreal distinction between Israel and its settlement project. While understanding the political logic, those did feel out of sync with the trajectory the conflict appears to be on. For Palestinians and Israeli Jews to live in equality, and with mutual dignity and well-being, there are fundamentals of the failed previous approach, which need to be questioned. Perhaps it was understandable that September 8th was not the occasion for that, and the framing does not detract from the measures themselves.
The weakness of the counterclaims and pushback
I have already noted that this seems to have landed well for the new Labour government—in parliamentary and political terms, and with the public. In the parliamentary debate, there were important members from opposition parties who rose to speak in support of the measures.
One of the more edifying realities of the last week was to see just how weak and unconvincing were the talking points from those opposing the measures. That didn’t take away from the shrill tone of their promoters, nor how extensively those were platformed in the mainstream media—but it seems the arguments just didn’t land, and for good reason.
When Miliband’s Conservative counterpart endorsed his support for two states but opposed doing anything, Foreign Secretary Miliband landed an open punch, namely, if we agree how badly this is going, then how could you possibly endorse continuing to do nothing? It’s not exactly difficult to make the case that the policy of status quo handwringing has failed.
There were claims that differentiation of settlement goods and trade is impossible to implement—simply not true. Governments already maintain the postcodes of non-eligible settlement areas, and Israel is bound to apply rules of origin designations unless it wants to provoke a broader crisis, not just with the UK.
It was almost comical for some to claim that Israel was being singled out, with U.S. Ambassador Huckabee suggesting the UK should sanction Russia or Iran instead.
The point here is that the UK and others do have extensive sanctions regime—the exceptionalism in play here is that in many ways those have been uniquely avoided when it comes to Israeli violations of international law and the maintenance of bilateral relations unaffected by those violations, hence the third-party complicity in Israeli criminality.
What is perhaps worth singling out is that in this instance, the criminal actor has an extensive lobby and media echo chamber at its disposal. There is, for instance, no lobby proudly and endlessly advocating for Hemedti’s RSF criminal forces in Sudan.
One of the more egregious arguments put forward was that these measures should be opposed out of concern for Palestinians—that it would hurt their economic well-being. An argument exclusively coming from the Israel Lobby rather than Palestinians themselves! It is an argument wildly inconsistent with the overwhelming call from Palestinians for such a ban.
The same argument was made by sympathisers of apartheid South Africa in trying to prevent sanctions on that regime. It denies Palestinian agency, priorities and strategy: Palestinians do understand that short-term economic pain may be necessary to challenge the occupation. They oppose perpetual servitude and inequality, the denial of their basic rights and freedoms. Anyone interested in Palestinian economic well-being should look at how Israel has hindered the development of the Palestinian economy by maintaining and expanding the occupation, expropriating land and resources, imposing closures, preventing independent Palestinian relations with the outside world, withholding tax revenues for the Palestinian Authority, and creating a captive and wholly dependent economic relationship. This leaves many Palestinians with little choice but to partake in precarious wage labour in Israel and settlements.
Finally, in the big lie category, Brits were repeatedly told that these measures could endanger the health and well-being of British citizens because they would apply to Teva pharmaceuticals, which we were told constitutes roughly 1 in 7 NHS prescriptions (sometimes cited as ~14%).
This lie was used in various op-eds and scare stories and even during the intervention by Conservative Shadow Foreign Secretary Tom Tugendhat, immediately following Miliband’s announcement.
The Israeli Teva pharmaceuticals company does not have operations over the green line in Israel’s illegal settlements, its previous facility in the West Bank was closed about a decade ago (Teva never acknowledged that was due to boycott pressure, but it’s a reasonable assumption, and a number of companies have quietly closed their settlement facilities due to the success of such campaigns).
As this Times of Israel piece makes clear, if a threat exists it is not due to the British sanctions regime, which would not cover Teva, it exists if Teva refused to sell its products in Britain. That would be a strange countermeasure for a publicly traded company. Were Israel to go down that path, Britain has plenty of responses it could put in play, and that’s even before one gets into the increasing availability of cheaper generic versions of the drugs Teva provides.
In summary, the Israeli pharmaceutical boycott threat to British public health is quite simply a lie.
Postscript
So much of the debate in the UK ended up framing this around threats to Jews and Jewish security—that requires a deeper dive, which I intend to come back to.
It is worth noting, though, that having argued for so long that Antisemitism results from conflating Israel with Jews, it is now so often legacy Jewish establishment groups who are taking the lead in actually doing the conflation, and by extension are likely to be encouraging Antisemitism itself.
This really shouldn’t be a Jewish question—it is one of international law and UK responsibility, as well as how to end a conflict hurtling to an appalling place—ultimately for the benefit of Palestinians and Israeli Jews.
There is an entire unpacking that needs to take place around the interventions of Jewish institutions whose representative nature is dubious, and not least the office of the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis. It is not so well known, for instance, that his title is misleading—he is recognized as the head rabbi by less than a third of synagogue-affiliated British Jews. He is actually rabbi of the United Synagogue, itself only one part of the Orthodox community, and his standing is not recognized by Progressive Judaism, Conservative Judaism, or indeed the many ultra-Orthodox branches represented in the British Jewish community.
There is not a Jewish consensus on the government’s new measures, on settlements, or indeed on Zionism. It is time to wake up to the diversity of Jewish opinion (something which I personally feel strongly about). Thankfully, some figures have spoken up. This tendency to treat the issue as somehow an intra-Jewish debate has also led to the criminal marginalizing of British Palestinian voices in the media.
So let me leave you with this interesting data point on the eve of a new Jewish year—a poll last year by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (itself an establishment institution here in the UK) found that among British Jews under 30, the split between those identifying as Zionist versus not is 47% to 44% (24% identify as anti-Zionist, 20% as non-Zionist). One would have no sense of that whatsoever if one followed most of the mainstream British media.