By Tim Livesey
Chair of Trustees, Britain Palestine Project
9 Sept 2026
It would be hard to overstate the historic significance of the British Foreign Secretary’s, Ed Miliband’s, statement to the House of Commons on Tuesday.
Not only because successive United Kingdom Foreign Secretaries, and Prime Ministers, have failed to grasp the nettle of responding meaningfully to Israel’s progressive tightening of its grip on the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967–though that lamentable failure must be recognised.
After decades of frustration, bordering sometimes on despair, a British Foreign Secretary finally stood up in the Commons and said enough is enough. A line was drawn. Actions have replaced words and empty rhetoric. Critics will say too little too late. And they may be proved right. But the response of Israel’s Government suggests it, at least, fears this may be a more significant development than some sceptics are willing to imagine.
The Britain Palestine Project agrees. We applaud Ed Miliband’s statement and the package of measures announced yesterday. We also applaud the moral clarity he brought to his statement from the dispatch box, informed as it was by personal experience, family history and a welcome dose of historic and political realism. One test of the package, which does not contain every measure on every campaigner’s ideal checklist, is whether the whole proves to be greater than the sum of the parts. we are hopeful and we think that the response from Israel’s Government, and others, points in that direction.
A potentially potent band of allies
Take for instance the relatively restrained response from the United States to date. Or the coalition of the willing (… ‘to follow suit’) nations that Miliband has wisely assembled in advance of his announcement. He knows he is going into a battle. He surprised many observers by successfully garnering supportive commitments from a potentially potent band of allies – notably France and Canada – who have said they will also implement a ban on settlement goods. Not forgetting those who took similar steps ahead of the UK including Spain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium and Norway. Or the courageous action South Africa, and others, have taken in seeking the adjudication of the International Court of Justice on the accusation that Israel is guilty of perpetrating a genocide in Gaza. This begins to look like a sea change in the struggle to end Israel’s occupation and the intensifying programme of annexation of Palestinian land.
The Foreign Secretary went further in accepting the ICJ’s July 2024 opinion that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza is illegal; also accepting that the UK has a responsibility to do everything in its power to end that occupation; meanwhile doing nothing to support or prolong it. Hence the measure to ban trade with, and selected services supporting, all illegal settlements.
He went even further in formally accusing the present Government of Israel of facilitating a programme of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, largely perpetrated by extremist and violent settlers but aided and abetted by elements within the Government. This was a Rubicon moment. Miliband made it clear that the UK could have no future truck with either ignoring or even inadvertently facilitating potential war crimes. This imposes obligations on the Government that many have long recognised and advocated for. It seems that the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister agree.
From that admission there can be no turning back. Yes, there will be arguments around implementation and legal interpretation, about the export of F-35 spares from the UK into the global spares pool run by the US for example.
Firm foundation of the rule of law
But it does seem that a page has irrevocably been turned. That British foreign policy, particularly in relation to Israel and Palestine, will finally be put back on the firm foundation of the rule of law, of equality before that law, of shared and equal rights to self-determination and security, and – for the UK Government at least – the goal of a two-state outcome to this almost 80-year-old conflict between two peoples.
Ed Miliband was keen to stress that the measures he announced on 8 Sept in no sense deviated from our Government’s commitment to combat antisemitism in all its ugly manifestations. the BPP supports that determination and Miliband’s unequivocal belief, shared by so many Jews including Jewish religious leaders, ‘that there is absolutely no contradiction between this [pride in his Jewishness and his unwavering support for the State of Israel] and my support for the State of Palestine.’ or, as Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg puts it addressing his fellow Jews in Britain and elsewhere: ‘We must speak out. We must do so out of deep concern for what is human and just, and for the sake of Israel and Judaism. We cannot turn away. It is possible to care deeply for our fellow Jews, in Israel, be concerned for our own safety as Jews in the UK and believe that it is right that the UK Government and allies take action to safeguard the lives of both Israelis and Palestinians.’
The BPP for its part will support the Government in this next phase, buoyed by the policy reset announced by Foreign Secretary Miliband. We were before yesterday, and will remain, committed to pressing for the political will and follow up needed to make last year’s symbolic recognition of Palestine a reality on the ground. It seems finally, after a very long wait, that our Government is too.