What Is Changing Between Britain and Israel?

Ishtiaq Ahmed 

Bradford: Dozens of delegations walked out of the United Nations General Assembly as Benjamin Netanyahu began his address to the 81st session. It was an important political gesture: a visible expression of opposition to Israel’s conduct in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories.

But there was another, perhaps less theatrical, dimension to the event.

Those who remained in the chamber helped provide Netanyahu with the international platform from which he could present his government’s case to the world. For his critics, this was not simply a speech by a head of government. The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu in November 2024, alleging responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including starvation as a method of warfare, murder, persecution and other inhumane acts. The warrant remains in force.

His appearance does raise a legitimate question about the relationship between international institutions, diplomatic protocol and accountability.

There was also something striking about Netanyahu’s speech itself. Much of it appeared directed as much towards an Israeli domestic audience as towards the international community.

With an election approaching in Israel, his presentation of himself as the defender of Israel against hostile foreign powers had an obvious domestic political dimension. Reuters has reported that Netanyahu has been using familiar security-focused themes as part of his re-election campaign.

Yet, for all the symbolism of the UN walkout, I believe the more significant development took place elsewhere , in the British Parliament.

Britain changes direction

In September 2026, the British government announced what it described as a major change in its approach to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.

Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced measures including a ban on imports from illegal Israeli settlements and sanctions against people and companies that support, facilitate or profit from settlement activity. 

More fundamentally, the British government stated that Israel’s continuing occupation of Palestinian territories is unlawful and presented the measures as an attempt to protect the viability of a two-state solution.

This is considerably more consequential than a walkout at the United Nations.

A walkout is symbolism. A government changing its trade policy, imposing sanctions and explicitly grounding its position in international law is policy.

Britain’s new approach also places it alongside countries such as France and Canada, which have taken similar measures concerning settlement goods. Miliband has presented the change as part of a wider attempt to build greater international cooperation around international law and the preservation of a two-state settlement.

The Israeli government reacted strongly. Among the measures announced in response was a plan to close the British consulate in East Jerusalem and restrictions on British parliamentarians. The proposed closure has itself become the subject of a legal dispute, with former UK attorney general Dominic Grieve arguing that Israel has no legal authority to close the British consulate because East Jerusalem is internationally regarded as occupied territory.

The importance of Britain’s position cannot therefore be understood simply as another diplomatic disagreement.

It has to be viewed against Britain’s own history.

Britain’s historic responsibility

Britain’s relationship with the creation of Israel is not a minor footnote in this history. It is one of the central chapters.

In November 1917, Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour wrote to Lord Rothschild expressing the British government’s support for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, while also stating that nothing should prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities.

The contradiction between those two commitments would become one of the defining problems of the subsequent history of Palestine.

Britain subsequently administered Palestine under a League of Nations Mandate. The Balfour Declaration was incorporated into the Mandate framework, while Britain’s policies increasingly confronted the competing aspirations of the Jewish and Arab populations.

Palestinian opposition intensified during the 1930s. The Arab Revolt of 1936–39 was met with severe British repression. The Peel Commission subsequently proposed partition in 1937, recognising that the competing national claims were becoming increasingly difficult to reconcile within a single political framework.

The situation became even more complicated as Nazi persecution of European Jews intensified and Jewish immigration to Palestine increased.

In 1939, Britain issued a White Paper proposing an eventual independent Palestinian state and limiting Jewish immigration. The policy attempted to balance Britain’s conflicting commitments but satisfied neither side.

By the end of the Second World War, Britain was increasingly unable   and unwilling to maintain the Mandate.

In 1947, Britain handed the Palestine question to the United Nations. The UN General Assembly subsequently adopted Resolution 181, recommending partition.

Israel declared independence in May 1948. Britain formally ended its Mandate, with legislation providing for the termination of British jurisdiction in Palestine.

The war that followed resulted in the displacement of approximately 750,000 Palestinians.

From that point onwards, Britain’s direct influence declined while the United States increasingly became the dominant external power in the politics of the region.

But Britain’s historical responsibility did not disappear with the end of the Mandate.

The unfinished business of Balfour

The British role in the creation of Israel has itself been described in very different ways. Some British governments have celebrated it; others have emphasised the failure to protect the rights of Palestine’s Arab population.

The contradiction was acknowledged even within British political discourse.

In 2017, Boris Johnson, then Foreign Secretary, described the Balfour Declaration as having laid the foundations for the State of Israel while also acknowledging that its crucial proviso concerning the rights of the non-Jewish population had not been fully realised.

That unresolved contradiction continues to shape the debate today.

Britain helped establish the political framework within which the Jewish national home became a state. It also failed to resolve the competing national aspirations of the Palestinians who already lived in the country.

That history gives particular significance to Britain’s current change of direction.

From historical responsibility to present policy

The British government’s September decision does not erase its history, nor does it settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It does, however, represent a departure from a longstanding pattern in which Britain’s relationship with Israel was often protected by the broader strategic priorities of Western foreign policy.

The new measures recognise that settlement expansion threatens the territorial basis of a viable Palestinian state. The British government has explicitly connected its action to the preservation of the two-state solution.

That is the important point.

The debate should not be reduced to whether one likes or dislikes Netanyahu, or whether one approves of a particular speech at the United Nations. The deeper question is whether international governments are prepared to translate their stated commitment to international law into concrete political and economic action.

For decades, governments have spoken about a two-state solution while facts on the ground have continued to change.

Words alone have not stopped settlement expansion.

If the two-state solution is genuinely to remain viable, it requires more than declarations at international conferences. It requires governments to use the diplomatic, legal and economic instruments available to them.

That is why the British shift matters.

The walkout at the United Nations was visible. It made for powerful television and conveyed the depth of international opposition to Netanyahu’s government.

But the less dramatic decision taken in London may prove more significant.

A government changing its trade policy, imposing sanctions on settlement activity and explicitly declaring Israel’s continuing occupation unlawful is not theatre. It is an attempt to translate diplomatic language into policy.

For Britain, there is an additional historical dimension.

A century after Balfour, and nearly eight decades after the end of the British Mandate, Britain remains connected to the consequences of decisions made when it exercised power over Palestine.

Perhaps the real measure of this new British policy will therefore not be the strength of the statements made in Parliament, nor the reaction from Jerusalem, nor even the applause it receives internationally.

It will be whether Britain is finally prepared to match its historical responsibility with sustained action , and whether that action can help preserve the possibility of two peoples living with equal rights, security and self-determination.

That would be considerably more important than the theatre of the United Nations.

The author is a British citizen of Pakistani origin with a keen interest in Pakistani and international affairs.

The article is the writer’s opinion, it may or may not adhere to the organization’s editorial policy.