Britain breaks with Israel over the West Bank land grab

On September 8, His Majesty’s Government said that the United Kingdom will be more actively supportive of justice for Palestine. Specifically, it shall be illegal for residents of the UK to purchase items made in the Occupied West Bank. This has resulted in fury from Israel and the United States.

In 1967, Israel seized the West Bank of the River Jordan. The West Bank is the larger portion of the homeland allotted to the Palestinians by the United Nations in 1948. The other portion of it is Gaza. In 1948, the UN gave 67% of Palestine to 33% of its residents: the Jews. After 1967, Israel began building what it called ‘settlements’ in the West Bank. The word ‘settle’ is a cosy word suggestive of comfort and tranquillity. The reality for the Palestinians is the total opposite.

Palestinians were driven from their homes with wanton brutality. Sometimes the house was stolen at gunpoint, and sometimes it was demolished. Palestinians who have stayed in the West Bank face daily harassment and humiliation. The Israeli illegal immigrants in the West Bank are often the most outspokenly racist and anti-Muslim elements in Israeli society. They are religious maniacs who are openly Jewish supremacists.

Most Palestinians have left the West Bank because of constant bestial attacks. Over the last five years, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been murdered by Israeli illegal immigrants in the West Bank. How many Israelis have been arrested in connection with these crimes? One.

At best, the Israeli Army and Israeli Police stand back and let the crimes be committed. But the Israeli security forces often abet these crimes or even commit the crimes themselves.

Trump founded the Board of Peace to govern Gaza. It has no Palestinian representation at all. In what sense is it about ‘peace’? It is about illegal occupation, supplantation, and racism. The Board of Peace has failed in its twin objectives of disarming Hamas and ending the Israeli occupation of Gaza. Trump has often publicly spoken of his desire to deport most of the Palestinian people from Gaza and then build Trump Towers and golf courses there while keeping a few Palestinians there as wage slaves.

British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband stated that the United Kingdom reaffirms its support for a two-state solution to the Palestine-Israel dispute. Israelis are striving to make that impossible by stealing the whole of the West Bank. Miliband said that Palestinian rights must be recognised and upheld. He spoke of the horror of Palestinian children in Gaza being deliberately denied medicine by the Israeli blockade.

Miliband accused Israel of ethnic cleansing. That term was invented in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, when people of a different ethno-religious background were regarded as filth by others and driven out. If they refused to leave, they were killed. Ratko Mladic, the Serb army commander, died in prison in The Hague on September 3. He was in prison for ethnic cleansing – the very crime that the Israeli Government brags about committing.

The US Ambassador to Israel, Mick Huckabee, fulminated and accused Miliband of Jew hatred. Miliband is Jewish, and Huckabee is not. Huckabee did not dispute the factual accuracy of what Miliband said. Miliband was not fomenting hatred, whereas Huckabee’s Republican Party and Zionists expectorate racial and religious hatred all the time. It is not hateful to express sympathy for children. It is not hateful to say sick children need medicine. It is not hateful to advocate for international law.

The British Labour Party’s newfound decency on Palestine is not entirely high-minded. The party has to play to pro-Palestinian sentiment. Labour backbench MPs demand action. The party needs to see off the challenge from the Green Party to its left. The Greens are passionately pro-Palestine.

Former Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has resigned as an MP. This necessitates a by-election in his former constituency of Holborn and St Pancras. The Greens were the runners-up last time. Zack Polanski, the Green Party leader, is standing there. Polanski is Jewish but a vociferous anti-Zionist.

The Green Party has excoriated the Labour Government for collusion in the Gaza Genocide. Labour won that constituency by 10 percentage points in 2024. Labour will probably win again, but speaking up for Palestine will definitely boost Labour. The British public is more sympathetic to Palestine than to Israel. Twenty years ago, it was the other way around.

It emerged that, since he became Prime Minister six weeks ago, Andy Burnham has not spoken to Netanyahu. The Israelis are already expelling British officials in charge of distributing aid in Gaza.

Israel is holding a general election in October. It is close, but at the moment it seems that Netanyahu’s Likud Party will narrowly lose. Israeli governments are always coalitions. But 78-year-old Netanyahu’s career might finally be over.

The United States and Israel have threatened the United Kingdom for trying to uphold international law and to defend human rights in Palestine. Some states in the US have a law that will trigger automatic sanctions against any country imposing sanctions on Israel.

Florida is one of these states, and its governor, Ron DeSantis, is a confirmed hater of the Palestinians. The UK is not sanctioning Israel as such, but only Israel’s illegal colonies. But the United States reacts as though it is. One of the most vicious Israeli demagogues, Bezalel Smotrich, has said that his country should immediately expel the British Ambassador.

Fifty per cent of Britons approve of outlawing trade with Israel’s illegal colonies, and only 25% disapprove. The rest did not answer. Among supporters of the ruling Labour Party, approval for sanctions is 70%. It is an easy win for Burnham with his backbenchers.

For 20 years, the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement has tried to achieve freedom for Palestine by exclusively peaceful and lawful means. Zionists are worried about that, and they have mobilised effectively to intimidate anyone who advocates for BDS. BDS has been smeared as racist and even terrorist. BDS believes that sanctions can defeat injustice, as they did against the apartheid government in South Africa.

In 2026, Israel has accelerated its robberies in the West Bank and its construction of illegal colonies. Even Israel does not claim that the West Bank is part of Israel. Some Israeli politicians have said that Israel should declare the West Bank annexed. In 2023, Israel proclaimed that it had annexed the Golan Heights, which is part of Syria.

Currently, the E1 Project is underway – a major expansion of Israeli illegal colonies in East Jerusalem. In 1948, the UN created Israel and stated that Jerusalem was the shared capital of Palestine and Israel. Israel seized the whole city in 1967 and refuses to share it.

The US rages against illegal immigration except when it is into Palestine. Israelis have no right to reside in Palestine. If they were to apply for visas and the Palestinians chose to let them in, that would be different.

Ed Miliband has denounced the many cruelties inflicted on the defenceless people of Gaza. However, he has not endorsed the list of demands forwarded by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Miliband noted that the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) is preventing vital aid from being brought to Gaza. The IDF cites spurious security grounds. The items the IDF is keeping out have no military application. It is sheer sadism.

The Israeli colonies in the West Bank are a blatant breach of international law. It is against the Geneva Convention and the Hague Convention to transfer Israeli civilians to occupied land and to drive the citizens of that land out. The International Court of Justice ruled that the West Bank is illegally occupied. The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and other top Israeli officials for their countless crimes against humanity.

The US has sanctioned judges on the ICC and the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Palestine, Francesca Albanese. Mrs Albanese has faced constant death threats and threats to abduct and rape her 14-year-old daughter. The ICC is doing what it is supposed to do and judging the evidence before it.

There is a mountain of irrefragable evidence of crimes against humanity committed by the IDF in Gaza, and Israel shows no sign whatsoever of bringing its citizens to justice for their endless offences against law and morality. Therefore, the ICC is duty-bound to attempt to do so.

The United States has participated in international tribunals against its former foes in Germany and Japan and encouraged them regarding the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. But when the USA’s ally is found to have committed genocide, then the US Government is irate that international law also applies. The US Government has abetted these crimes by providing the weapons with which the murders are committed, providing intelligence, providing diplomatic cover, and funding the crimes.

South Africa submitted a case to the ICJ against Israel for genocide. The Government of South Africa’s dossier consisted mostly of public statements by Israeli politicians and military personnel. The United Kingdom has mulled joining South Africa’s suit against Israel.

The IDF is overstretched and may find it hard to defend the new illegal colonies in the West Bank in the event of war. The Netanyahu Administration authorised them to appeal to the most frankly racist segment of Israeli opinion. Some Israelis cite the Bible as their reason for stealing Palestinian soil.

Even the US Government is not happy about yet more Israeli illegal colonies. Washington, DC, said some of them should be knocked down. Arab Governments have often protested to the United States about these continuing flagrant violations of international law.

In 2024, the ICJ issued an opinion saying that governments are obliged to refrain from doing anything to help Israel in its unlawful military occupation of Palestine.

It emerged in 2025 that land stolen from Palestinians had been offered for sale at a property event held in London. Knowingly buying stolen property is a crime.

The UK said the trouble is that it is hard to distinguish which goods are made in Israel and which in the illegal colonies. The simplest thing would be to ban both. But the United Kingdom does not want to go too far. Items made in Israel’s illegal colonies have not had tariff preference in the UK since 2005.

In 2025, trade between the State of Israel and the UK was worth only GBP 6 billion. The UK economy is worth GBP 3 trillion. However, the Israelis have some of the best surveillance, espionage, and communications technology in the world. They are also advanced in pharmaceuticals.

An Israeli company is prospecting for oil in the Falkland Islands. These are British-owned islands in the South Atlantic which are also claimed by Argentina. Israel is one of the few countries that recognises the islands as rightfully British. Some hardline Israeli politicians have said the country should change this policy to recognise Argentine sovereignty over the islands. The US Government has also thought aloud about doing likewise. Argentina is very friendly towards Israel, and President Javier Milei visited Israel and addressed the Knesset, assuring them of his country’s unstinting support.