Eighth September 2026 marks another important day in UK-Israel-Palestine relations. Once again, Great Britain leads the way in censoring Israel for its illegal activities in the West Bank. In a highly anticipated speech in the House of Commons, the British Foreign Minister Ed Miliband announced a ban on all goods produced in the illegally occupied West Bank settlements.
The announcement gains added weight as it was made by a prominent Jewish Foreign Secretary who had served as the leader of the Labour Party and who might still play a more important role in British politics in the future. His older brother, David Miliband, also served as British foreign secretary from 2007 to 2010. Later on, he resigned from Parliament to serve as President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee in New York City.
According to a book co-authored by Mehdi Hasan and James Macintyre, Ed Miliband’s parents, Ralph Miliband and Marion Kozak, had been the victims of vicious antisemitism in Belgium and Poland, prompting their flight to the UK. Ralph Miliband also took a professorship at Brandeis University in 1977 and also lectured at other universities in North America, including York University in Toronto and the City University in New York, but he was based in Britain. Both his sons studied at Oxford University.
Israel, which occupied the West Bank and Jerusalem during the Six-Day War, has gradually moved more and more Palestinians from their homes and occupied and annexed their homes. Already, more than 700,000 settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in settlements built illegally on occupied Palestinian lands. Since the start of the genocide in Gaza, the pace of building more settlements and attacks on Palestinians has accelerated. According to an analysis of United Nations data, 1,036 Palestinians – including 225 children – had been killed by Israeli forces or settlers between 2006 and the end of 2022. However, by comparison, in the last three years, from 2023 to the end of last year, 1,244 Palestinians – including 268 children – have been killed.
In recent days, the Israeli government has announced a big increase in the number of new settlements, basically making it impossible for the establishment of a Palestinian state, to which many Western governments still pay lip service. In fact, during the ceremony at a settlement in the occupied West Bank last September, Israel’s prime minister made his intentions quite clear. “We are going to fulfil our promise that there will be no Palestinian state,” said Benjamin Netanyahu. “This place belongs to us.”
Recently, the opening up of tenders for the construction of 1,200 settlement homes on the strategically important land between East Jerusalem and the West Bank has brought widespread condemnation. After the recent announcement, the UN Secretary General said they posed an “existential threat” to a future Palestinians state, while a joint statement by the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Canada said the plans were “unacceptable” and would “drive a wedge through the West Bank”, a sentiment echoed by the European Union. However, so far, those objections had remained at the level of unenforceable condemnations, but the statement by the British foreign secretary gives them some teeth.
This decision will be followed by several other countries. Last September, Britain together with several other European countries and Canada recognized the state of Palestine. Today, Miliband said that eleven countries, including France, Canada, Spain and Poland, will implement the same sanctions on Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which are illegal under international law.
Just prior to the speech by Ed Miliband, the British Prime Minister Andy Burnham also came to the chamber and sat next to him, showing approval for his statement. As Miliband spoke, the government benches were full, but there were very few MPs on the opposition benches, including the shadow Conservative foreign secretary and a handful of other MPs.
The statement has been welcomed by most other political parties in Britain. Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesperson Calum Miller said his party supports the foreign secretary in “robustly challenging the illegal actions” of the Israeli government.
He said this was compatible with the right of both Israel and Palestine to exist, and the “resolute support” for the rights of British Jews to live “free from the scourge of anti-Jewish hatred”.
Last week Miliband said he had met with people who had returned from Gaza and heard “horrific” stories about “medicines being blocked” and “children dying while waiting for vital life-saving treatment.” Stephen Daisley, a Jewish Chronicle columnist, accused Miliband of making a deliberately “incendiary” claim and playing “into tropes of Jews as child-killers”. In fact, this is what U.N. humanitarian agencies have been saying about critical shortages of food and medicine.
Significantly, Miliband accused Israelis of “ethnic cleansing”, which was being carried out by “settler terrorists” while the Israeli government turns a “blind eye”. Britain’s chief rabbi and some of Britain’s most prominent Jewish communal organizations, including The Jewish Leadership Council, which represents many of the UK’s Jewish organizations, have complained that Miliband’s proposed ban on trade with illegal Israeli settlements is not just counterproductive and hostile to Israel but dangerous and harmful to British Jews, putting an “increased target on British Jews”.
The Christian Zionist US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has accused Ed Miliband of “Jew hate”. He also told a BBC reporter that he did not recognize “occupied territories” as, according to him, “Judea and Samaria” belong to the Jews.
Israeli officials have already taken some retaliatory actions against Britain. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar called the UK government “hostile” and the British boycott of Israeli goods “despicable.” He also announced a number of countermeasures, including:
1- The closure of the British consulate in Jerusalem.
2- The removal of British representatives from the International Gaza Support Center in Kiryat Gat in southern Israel
3- The removal of British representatives from the International Gaza Support Center in Kiryat Gat in southern Israel
4- The banning of 12 MPs from entering the country, including some prominent left-wing MP’s, such as former Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn, and Zarah Sultana and Diane Abbot.
On the other hand, Palestinian ambassador to the UK, Husam Zomlot, welcomed the sanctions. In a post on X, he wrote: “Today, Britain begins to move from condemnation to consequences, from words to action.” Zomlot said that it is not possible to “recognise the state of Palestine” while “allowing its territory to be annexed”. He added, “Britain should now lead in Europe, across the Commonwealth, and internationally, to ensure that no state, company, bank, or institution contributes to, facilitates, or profits from this illegal occupation.”
At the same time, many commentators believe that the announcement today by Miliband, and his boss, Prime Minister Andy Burnham, doesn’t go far enough. Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, told the Guardian that a settlement trade ban would have to be part of “a true paradigm-shift to Israel-Palestine that ultimately seeks to implement the International Court of Justice advisory opinion in 2024”, which declared Israel’s presence in the occupied territories to be “unlawful in its entirety”. Per that opinion, Albanese said, “all states carry an obligation – not a preference of an obligation – not to recognize the situation as legal, and not render aid and assistance in maintaining it”.
Detail of current UK Foreign Minister Ed Miliband. [State Department photo by Chuck Kennedy/ Public Domain] in March 2023 when he was Shadow Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero. Via Picryl .
In a statement on X, Albanese wrote: “I welcome the stance taken by the UK government on Israel’s occupation and its illegality. A much-needed beginning, even if it does not yet reverse all policies undermining Palestinian self-determination. May the UK government and people hold firm. The pressure will be fierce.”
After years of genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank with total impunity, the time has come to hold Israel accountable for all those crimes. While the statement is most welcome, the Israeli government is so brazen that it will continue as before unless some practical measures by leading Western countries force it to change course and abide by international law.
Of course, all these measures will be ineffective without US help and participation. Let us hope that recent experiences of excessive actions by Israel, including the genocide in Gaza, the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, the massacres in Lebanon and the wars on Iran and other countries which have dragged the United States into a quagmire, have persuaded US leaders to say that enough is enough and try to rein in Israel, which has become totally reckless and out of control.
The future peace and security in the Middle East depend on finding an equitable resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. There is already a great deal of anger in the Middle East. If the Palestinians lose hope in the possibility of an independent state in the future in which they can enjoy peace and security, the situation will become explosive. This is not in anyone’s interest, including the United States, which needs to win the support of the people in the Middle East to put an end to the terrible legacy of Israeli genocide during the past few years.
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