“The impact of settler violence and terrorism has been catastrophic for Palestinian communities. Settlement expansion and attempts to create irreversible divisions on the ground threaten peace, security and the prospects for a viable Palestinian state. Britain will not stand back and accept the destruction of a two-state solution.”
So stated the new British Foreign Secretary, Ed Miliband, on 19 August. It was the forerunner to a dramatic change in policy.
This week, Miliband renounced Britain’s bystander status on the Israel-Palestine imbroglio and introduced product bans and sanctions against settlements.
The Netanyahu coalition responded by closing the British Consulate in Jerusalem. It has also closed entry to Israel for 12 MPs on Labour’s Left and the Greens.
Miliband spoke as “a proud British Jew” who “unwaveringly” supported the state of Israel and its right to defend itself, but vehemently opposed the actions of its government. He expressed gratitude to Britain for taking in his family, which had fled Belgium before the Nazi advance in 1940 and to the State of Israel for giving sanctuary to his grandmother.
The main charge is that Israeli construction in the E1 region, which connects the Palestinian population centres of Jerusalem, Ma’ale Adumim and Ramallah, will prevent territorial contiguity – and thereby wreck the basis for a two-state solution. It had been strongly opposed by the Europeans for decades, and now with an election looming, it has been resurrected by Netanyahu.
Miliband noted that more settlements have been initiated under the current Netanyahu coalition than in the past 20 years. He also noted that former prime minister Ehud Olmert and Ephraim Sneh, a minister in Yitzhak Rabin’s government, termed the occupation “unlawful”.
140 Labour MPs recently asked for a ban on settlement produce. Miliband heard them. He banned imports of settlement produce and placed sanctions on those who have facilitated the building of settlements – a ban that has also been joined by Canada, France and nine other countries. He also sanctioned Hezbollah’s financial arm and increased sanctions on Iran. An opponent of BDS, Miliband rejected claims that Israel would become a pariah state.
In the House of Commons, Miliband was accompanied by the prime minister and the cabinet. There was however, a surprising agreement on the issues by the major parties and a condemnation of settler violence on the West Bank by the Father of the House, Sir Edward Leigh – a longtime member of the Conservative Friends of Israel.
The West Bank, however, in 2026 is an archipelago of Palestinian locations and not one of two states existing side by side. The idea of territorial contiguity began to dissipate 25 years ago when Ariel Sharon was Prime Minister, and Netanyahu was his Minister of Finance. While a two-state solution and partition remains the only principled answer to the conflict, the meaning and contours of a viable Palestinian state are still up in the air.
In addition, the quantity of settlement produce imported to the UK is very small. The ban will probably be difficult to enforce and the Netanyahu government will no doubt find a way around it. What was important, however, was the symbolic value of Miliband’s actions.
It can certainly be argued that the attitude of the Burnham government towards the Israeli government is more radical than that of Keir Starmer. But the Likud governments since Netanyahu’s election in 2009 have rapidly radicalised to the extent that the disciples of Meir Kahane now sit in the Israeli government
In Britain in 1948, the further Left that you went, the more Zionist you were. Could it be that the government of Ben-Gurion, Sharett and Golda Meir then was fundamentally different in terms of its Jewish values and its understanding of Zionism compared to that of Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir today? Is it no wonder that liberal and social democratic non-Jewish friends of Israel have reached the end of their political tether?
In the heated atmosphere of a forthcoming election – with the Netanyahu coalition continually being outstripped in all polls by support for the opposition, led by Eisenkot, Bennett and Golan – the Likud and the far Right are making provocative claims in the hope that it will attract voters to a party’s standard. This cultivation applies in particular to the half a million settlers on the West Bank excluding East Jerusalem. Around 60 per cent of the West Bank population are eligible to vote, and this accounts for 5 or 6 seats in the Knesset.
But perhaps the most bizarre utterance was that of Ben-Gvir in calling for recognition of the Argentinian claim to the Falkland Islands, which have been British since 1833.
Ben-Gvir believes that history can be bent to fit a political agenda, and if it can also be embroidered with fake facts – then all the better. He mentioned that the British were exploiting this situation in exploring oil fields off the Falklands, which, he claimed, rightfully belonged to Argentina. He forgot to mention that the British were being partnered with the Israeli Navitas Petroleum company. He also forgot to mention that the Argentinian junta that initiated the Falklands war in 1982 murdered 30,000 people, including a disproportionate number of Jews opposed to the military regime.
If all rational argument fails, then the prevailing wisdom is to accuse the Burnham government of being antisemitic – as did the evangelical US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckerbee – despite the fact that Miliband stated in Parliament that he is proudly Jewish. It replicates Putin’s claim that neo-Nazis are directing the war in Kyiv – even though Volodymir Zelensky is Jewish.
In its response beforehand, Jewish leadership in the UK tried to be all things to all British Jews. While it condemned settler violence, it took no stand on the settlements themselves. It demoted any public support for a two-state solution. All this despite the fact that according to several surveys over many years, a majority of British Jews have consistently opposed the settlement drive on the West Bank. In essence, Jewish leadership found it impossible to articulate a credible explanation of events under the hammer blows of Ben-Gvir and his friends. It grew vague and incoherent when it came to commenting on the actions of the Netanyahu coalition.
Netanyahu’s policies have aided the far Left in the UK in promoting criticism of 1948 over criticism of 1967 – that the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 was the root of all evil and not the conquest of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. The excuse of Jewish organisations was that the measures proposed by Miliband would bring the far Left’s approach into mainstream politics. Miliband’s speech demonstrated that the Labour Party had not been influenced by the far Left – and even pro-Palestinian MPs embraced the two-state solution.
The irony of Miliband’s address was that he spoke for many British Jews whereas Jewish establishment organisations did not. They relied instead on Labour’s Conservative opponents who actually agreed with much of Miliband’s approach, but many looked decidedly sheepish in expressing the views of Jewish leadership.
Arguments can, of course, be made that Miliband’s reset will help Netanyahu in the coming election or that it was insensitive to have made it in the days before Rosh Hashanah. But Miliband’s speech feels like a watershed and a breakthrough – but clearly only time will tell. For establishment Jewish organisations, their subservience to solely thinking inside the box has produced a denouement of catastrophic proportions. History will not remember them kindly.
Jewish Independent 9 September 2026