indah-permata
LONDON — One year after Britain formally recognised the State of Palestine, the government is pressing ahead with measures designed to turn that recognition into enforceable policy, declaring the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land unlawful and moving to choke the financial pipeline behind the settlements.
The recognition was announced on 22 September 2025, alongside nine other Western countries, at a ceremony at the Palestinian mission to the United Kingdom in London, where the Palestinian flag was raised over the headquarters. Husam S Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador to the UK, said the decisive shift was political rather than administrative: strong public backing for the Palestinian cause finally pushed a government long hesitant to align itself with international law.
For decades, according to Zomlot, London championed a two-state solution in words alone. Its logic, he writes, was "twisted": recognition was made conditional on the conclusion of a final peace agreement, which handed Israel a veto over the very outcome Britain claimed to support, even as successive Israeli governments — through "words, bulldozers and bombs" — worked to render Palestinian statehood impossible. He argues that framework treated Palestinian self-determination as a privilege to be earned through reform, "good governance" and benchmarks imposed on no other people, rather than as an inalienable right.
The policy follow-up came from Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, who announced that the British government now regards the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands as unlawful. His package includes bans on settlement goods, on services and on advertising connected to settlements, as well as restrictions on arms licences. It also introduces sanctions against companies that build, finance or sell homes in occupied territory, extending pressure to the private contractors, lenders and estate agents on whom the settlement economy depends.
Miliband acknowledged that Britain should have moved sooner. Prime Minister Andy Burnham was blunter still, arguing that British support for two states is "meaningless unless we back it up with action" — a formulation that has become the government's own defence of the shift from rhetoric to enforcement.
The legal foundation for the measures was laid in July 2024, when the International Court of Justice declared Israel's occupation unlawful, along with the separation wall and the settlements themselves, and characterised the near-total separation of settlers from Palestinians as equivalent to racial segregation and apartheid. The court ruled that the occupation must end "as rapidly as possible", a finding that campaigners say supplied the judicial cover for a widening European policy shift.
Within days of Miliband's announcement, 11 other governments — Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden — issued a parallel statement backing sanctions and restrictions on trade with settlements, bringing to 12 the number of countries publicly aligned on the question. Zomlot said coordination of that kind is essential, because individual measures are vulnerable to coercion and need a common front if they are to survive diplomatic pressure to reverse course.
Israel has answered the measures with its own escalatory steps, including an order telling London to close its consulate in occupied East Jerusalem within 30 days — an action Zomlot contends it cannot legally take, since Israel holds no sovereignty over the territory. Alongside the diplomatic moves, the author writes, the punitive measures unleashed on the Palestinian population have been worse still.
Since 2 September, Israeli forces have demolished every home in the village of Khirbet al-Tabban and in northern al-Fakhit in the occupied West Bank, leaving roughly 70 people — 28 of them children — without shelter. Village residents have said they intend to rebuild despite the destruction.
Settlement construction has also accelerated. Earlier this month, the occupation authorities issued tenders for 3,401 planned housing units as part of the E1 project, which critics warn would cut occupied East Jerusalem off from the rest of the occupied West Bank and entrench fragmentation of a future Palestinian state.
In Gaza, where roughly two million people remain confined to less than 30 percent of the territory, Israel continues to bomb and kill civilians, with more than 1,400 Palestinians reportedly killed since the so-called ceasefire began in October last year. Meanwhile, more than 140,000 tarpaulins and 7,500 tents intended to shelter Palestinians through the winter sit blocked in the Jordan corridor.
Zomlot argues that collective action must extend beyond the West Bank, calling for efforts to end what he describes as the ongoing genocide in Gaza and Israel's continuing violations of the ceasefire, alongside urgent pressure to secure aid delivery — particularly the shelter materials held up in the Jordan corridor.
On the ground, he says, the coming weeks will be telling. The olive harvest begins next month, and during last year's the United Nations recorded 126 settler attacks across 70 towns and villages in the first three weeks alone. In his view, this year's harvest is the first genuine test of whether sanctions on settlers carry weight in practice rather than on paper.
Drawing a historical parallel, Zomlot recalls that the boycott and sanctions campaign against apartheid South Africa was resisted by Western governments, including Britain's, and is now remembered as having lagged far behind their own publics. He argues the UK has a chance to lead — and to be judged differently — if it holds its nerve alongside a growing group of partners, as it did in the joint statement two weeks ago.
Next year marks 110 years since the Balfour Declaration, 80 years since the UN partition vote and 60 years since the occupation began. For Zomlot, the anniversary is less a moment of celebration than a countdown: "Palestine has had enough beginnings. What it needs now is an ending." After a generation in which law, politics and public sentiment rarely pointed the same way, he argues, all three now briefly align.
Comments (0)