This week marks one year since the United Kingdom, along with nine other Western countries, recognised the State of Palestine. What shifted was politics, not policy: overwhelming support for the Palestinian cause by the British public finally persuaded the government to align with the law. For decades, the UK backed a two-state solution in words only.
Its logic was twisted: recognise statehood only after a final peace agreement, handing Israel a veto over the very policy it claimed to support, even as successive Israeli governments worked – through words, bulldozers and bombs – to render Palestinian statehood impossible. This approach treated Palestinian self-determination as conditional, not an inalienable right — earned through reform, “good governance” and benchmarks no other people have been made to meet. The British recognition of Palestinian statehood marked a turning point – one that is already bearing fruit a year later.
Upgrading relations with Palestine has allowed the UK to turn rhetoric into policy. Almost a year after the UK formally recognised the State of Palestine, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced that the British government now regards the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands as unlawful. He then set out bans on settlement goods, services, advertising and arms licences, as well as sanctions on companies that build, finance or sell settlement homes.
This move is a logical next step after the British recognition of Palestinian statehood. The British foreign secretary, to his credit, acknowledged Britain should have acted sooner. Prime Minister Andy Burnham put it plainly: support for two states is “meaningless unless we back it up with action”.
The legal groundwork for these measures was laid in July 2024, when the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation unlawful, along with the separation wall and settlements, and its near-total separation of settlers to be equivalent to racial segregation and apartheid. The court ruled the occupation must end “as rapidly as possible”. After Miliband’s announcement, 11 other governments, including Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden, joined a parallel statement on sanctions and trade with settlements.
These measures matter because the occupation runs on an ecosystem of contractors, lenders, estate agents and Israeli state institutions sponsoring the settlements — and the new rules must reach every part of it. For decades, words on Palestine cost nothing while settlements multiplied; now there are consequences. It has ordered London to close its consulate in occupied East Jerusalem, which it cannot legally do since it holds no sovereignty there.
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