Britain has formally declared Israel’s occupation of the West Bank unlawful and accused Israeli settlers of carrying out the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, marking one of the sharpest shifts in UK policy towards Israel in decades.
Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband delivered the emotionally charged statement to the House of Commons, framing it as both a major foreign-policy announcement and a personal intervention shaped by his family’s history.
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“With permission, I would like to make a statement on Israel and Palestine,” he said.
“I do so as a proud British Jew, someone with the deepest gratitude to the state of Israel for giving a home to my grandmother after she lost her husband, my grandfather, and 60 other family members at the hands of the Nazis.
Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband making a statement on Israel-Palestine in the House of Commons
Mr Miliband used the opening of his speech to signal a fundamental change in the language and direction of Britain’s relationship with Israel. His Israeli counterpart later said the remarks carried “echoes of the antisemitic words” used by the former British military commander of mandatory Palestine during the interwar period.
Yet accusing Mr Miliband of outright antisemitism would have been difficult, given both the personal history he placed at the centre of his remarks and the stated legal basis for the policy shift.
The measures announced were not limited to Britain. The UK joined 11 other countries, including Ireland, in issuing a joint statement on Tuesday. France and Canada were also among the signatories.
The group includes two of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and three G7 countries. Their declaration that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is unlawful, coupled with sanctions, represents a significant escalation.
Last year, France, Britain and Canada recognised the State of Palestine ahead of the UN General Assembly in New York. The new sanctions on West Bank settlements are expected to be discussed at this year’s gathering in ten days.
Announcing France’s decision, Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot wrote on X: “France will end trade with Israeli settlements located in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, alongside eleven other countries that have made similar commitments.”
He added: “Why? Because the West Bank is on the brink of exploding: unchecked expansion of colonization in violation of international law, surge in violence perpetrated by extremist settlers against Palestinians, acts of terror denounced by the Israeli authorities themselves. – there is frenzied expansion of the settlements, a flare up of violence against Palestinians by extremist settlers, and acts of terror which have been attacked by Israeli authorities themselves.”
La France va mettre fin au commerce avec les colonies israéliennes situées dans les Territoires palestiniens occupés, avec onze autres pays qui ont pris des engagements du même ordre.
Pourquoi ?
Parce que la Cisjordanie est au bord de l’explosion : expansion effrénée de la… pic.twitter.com/mJStC3HgOk
— Jean-Noël Barrot (@jnbarrot) September 8, 2026
Mr Barrot argued that the relentless growth of settlements was not only unlawful but also posed a direct threat to Israel’s own security.
He continued: “The Israeli authorities must imperatively put an end to illegal colonization and the intolerable violence that accompanies it.
“France cannot, through its trade, support a situation that threatens the security of Israeli’s and Palestinians alike, as well as peace and stability in the region. Europe must uphold the same imperative.”
The appeal was directed in part at Berlin. Paris and other European capitals accuse Germany of helping block a common European Union trade ban on products from West Bank settlements.
Fianna Fáil MEP Barry Andrews made the criticism explicit on Tuesday night as he headed to a Renew Europe party meeting with President Macron at the Elysee Palace.
He said: “Countries like Germany and Italy are now clearly isolated in ignoring international law in the Middle East. It is also bitter that [European commission] President von der Leyen has shown again an abject failure of leadership”.
In an interview with the Irish Times on Friday, EU Foreign Policy chief Kaja Kallas said a ban on goods from the West Bank would represent a “principled stance” for the bloc.
She suggested that the measure might be adopted as a trade policy rather than a foreign-policy decision. That distinction matters because foreign-policy action requires unanimity, while trade measures can pass with a qualified majority of at least 15 of the 27 member states representing 65% of the EU population.
A blocking minority would need to include four countries accounting for 35% of the EU’s population. Germany and Italy together represent just under 32%, meaning they would need the support of two additional states contributing another 3-4%.
The EU’s Foreign Policy chief Kaja Kallas said a trade ban on goods from the West Bank would be a “principled stance” for the EU to take
Hungary and the Czech Republic have previously vetoed EU measures responding to Israel or imposing sanctions. If they joined Germany and Italy, they could prevent a trade measure from passing.
Mr Andrews and Ireland’s Labour Party said the Irish Government should follow Britain’s lead by banning services imports from the West Bank under the Irish Occupied Palestinian territory (Prohibition of Importation of Goods) Act 2026.
The Act, signed into law by the President at the end of July, says its purpose includes bringing Ireland into compliance with the International Court of Justice’s 2024 advisory ruling on the occupation of the West Bank.
Britain likewise said its policy was being revised to reflect the court’s opinion, with Mr Miliband formally setting out the government’s position in his speech on Tuesday.
“For a long time, the British Government have rightly said that settlements are illegal, but we have remained silent on the question of the legality of the occupation as a whole, which in 2024 the International Court of Justice concluded was unlawful,” he said.
“Today, I announce that the official view of the British government is that the occupation is unlawful, because of Israel’s entrenchment of its control, its intention to extend permanent sovereignty and its expansionist agenda via illegal settlements.”
The coordinated announcement was agreed the previous Thursday, after President Emmanuel Macron spent two hours meeting Prime Minister Andy Burnham in Downing Street. No press statement was issued after the meeting.
The policy reversal also reflects a change in Labour leadership, from Keir Starmer to Andy Burnham in July. That transition strengthened the hand of party figures who wanted Britain to send a more forceful diplomatic warning to Israel over settlement expansion and its impact on the prospects for a two-state solution.
The timing was further shaped by the publication of a tender for about 1,200 homes in E1, an area of the West Bank that critics say would effectively divide the territory along a north-south axis.
European governments have described the project as a potential point of no return, arguing that construction would make a future two-state agreement unworkable. The tender is due to close days before Israel’s next general election.
According to reporting by the Times Newspaper in London on Thursday, officials have been considering economic sanctions against Israeli settler activity in the West Bank for several years, but repeatedly advised ministers against pursuing them.
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham poses for photos with French President Emmanuel Macron
The Times reported that Foreign Office officials consulted embassy staff in Tel Aviv about restricting products from the West Bank. Embassy personnel said such a measure could not be implemented, but ministers chose to proceed regardless.
The original advice was sought before Mr Burnham became prime minister. The newspaper said officials had warned “successive governments”, including Conservative administrations, that separating the Israeli, Palestinian and settler economies would not be possible for the purpose of enforcing a trade ban.
The paper quoted an unnamed official source as saying: “This announcement has been made to feed into the fever of Labour Party Conference before kicking it into the long grass. They have no idea how this is going to work. It’s purely symbolic”.
But the change at the top of government appears to have shifted the balance within Labour towards more direct language and tougher measures against Israeli policy. Mr Miliband’s speech reflected that change.
Below was the core of his speech on Tuesday.
“What we seek today is to salvage the only course for peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians: the two-state solution. Let me start with the situation in the West Bank. At the time of the Oslo peace accords in 1993, around 270,000 settlers lived in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Today it is some 770,000. More settlements have been approved under the four years of this Israeli government than in the previous 20 years.
“Let us spell out what that has meant for Palestinian communities: houses bulldozed; roads and public infrastructure destroyed; families displaced from their homes, community by community, family by family, person by person. Sixty-five Palestinian communities have been completely expelled since 2023—a total of over 4,000 Palestinians have been evicted from their homes due to settler violence and state actions.
“In August, we saw the crossing of a long-standing red line: the issuing of E1 tenders for over 1,200 homes. I visited a community in the area covered by E1 in 2014. The Bedouin communities I met in Khan al-Ahmar had lived on that land for generations. E1 proposals would evict them and place settlements directly between East Jerusalem and the west bank, cutting through the heart of Palestine. Let us be absolutely clear what this means: the creation of a set of facts on the ground to make the two-state solution unviable.
“On top of official state policy, settler terrorism is rampant. The UN reports an average of six violent settler attacks against Palestinians per day this year – the highest on record. Let us take one example: in al-Mughayyir, 20 miles north of Jerusalem, settlers have encircled the village and mounted a campaign of intimidation, largely under the protection of the Israeli military.
“Families in the village are increasingly cut off from accessing their land, squeezed into ever smaller areas, and have olive trees uprooted and livestock stolen. In the same community, just last week, two teenagers were shot when settlers entered the village under police and military escort. Both died before reaching hospital. Five teenagers from their school have now been killed this year.
“Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli Prime Minister, has described what is happening as ‘a violent and criminal effort…to ethnically cleanse territories in the West Bank.’”
“The former Minister of Health and retired brigadier general from the Israel Defence Forces, Ephraim Sneh, has said: ‘This is ethnic cleansing, to put it simply.’”
“Ethnic cleansing is defined by the UN as ‘a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.’
“The British government agree that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank, perpetrated by settler terrorists. All too often, the Israeli government have turned a blind eye to that – and, worse, members of that government have made statements and taken actions to support the forced displacement of Palestinians.
“I recognise the gravity of saying this, but the truth is that it is the least the people who face such suffering deserve, and it should be the prelude to justice,” Mr Miliband said.
Israel responded almost immediately, while the United States had offered little public reaction by Friday night.
Within minutes of the Westminster debate ending, Gideon Sa’ar, Israel’s Foreign Minister, announced on television that the British Consulate in East Jerusalem would be closed. The consulate serves as Britain’s de facto embassy to the Palestinian Authority.
Israel also plans to expel several British civil servants and military personnel from the Gaza co-ordination centre and bar almost a dozen British MPs from entering the country, among them former Labour leader Jermy Corbyn.
Mr Sa’ar said: “The accusations made today by the Foreign Secretary of the Labour government in the British Parliament were outrageous lies.They chose to do this, on the eve of the holiest days in the Jewish calendar, for domestic political reasons, ahead of the Labour Party Conference taking place this month. The British move is morally distorted and constitutes blatant interference in the affairs of a sovereign state and in its electoral process.”
“A boycott of goods from Judea and Samaria is a despicable practice that harms hard-working, law-abiding citizens”, including, he said, thousands of Palestinians employed by Israeli-owned businesses.
He also rejected the British, French and Canadian governments’ assertions about the proposed construction in E1.
Read more:Israel to close British consulate in Jerusalem over sanctionsBurnham defends sanctions on Israel over West Bank settlementsLatest Middle East stories
“Contrary to the false claims of the Labour government, no new decisions have been made regarding development in E1. The decision was taken more than a year ago, and the tender process has been under way for many months,” he said.
“The claims regarding the severing of potential Palestinian territorial contiguity are also baseless. The decision of the Government of Israel, taken more than a year ago, stipulated that two roads would be built: the first, Road 80, which will serve as a major transportation route from the Bethlehem area to the Ramallah area; the second, known as the ‘Fabric of Life’ Road, between a-Za’im and al-Ezariya.”
Mr Sa’ar said the Israeli public overwhelmingly backs the settler communities in the West Bank and rejects the creation of “a Palestinian terror state”. He said international efforts to impose a two-state solution on Israel would fail.
He said: “After everything we have seen, after the Israeli concessions in the Oslo Accords and the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, the Second Intifada and 7 October, the Israeli public utterly rejects the establishment of a jihadist terror state in the heart of our land.
“I say to the Labour government and to every government in the world that thinks it can force Israel to act against our national and security interests: You have no chance of succeeding.
“We did not return to our land after 2,000 years only to lose it under pressure from jihadists, Islamists, antisemites, far-leftists and wokes. Not only will you fail to harm us. You will harm yourselves and your own influence.”
Mr Sa’ar described the sanctions as the latest in a series of British measures adopted since 2024. He listed them as: “Recognition of a virtual ‘Palestinian state’ in September 2025; the resumption of funding for UNRWA, even though its employees were actively involved in the 7 October massacre; the suspension of licences for defence exports to Israel, and today we learned of the intention to expand these restrictions; sanctions on Israeli ministers; sanctions on Israeli individuals and entities; the suspension of negotiations on a free trade agreement; restrictions on Israel’s official participation in the international defence and security equipment exhibition in Britain; the freezing of military dialogue and security cooperation; preventing IDF officers from participating in training at the Royal College of Defence Studies; and the promotion of repeated, biased and one-sided attacks against Israel in the international arena.”
Gideon Sa’ar said the Israeli public overwhelmingly supports the settler communities in the West Bank
He argued that these measures, together with what he called “biased and one-sided anti-Israel rhetoric”, had helped drive an “unprecedented rise in antisemitic attacks, including violent attacks against British Jews”.
Mr Sa’ar ended with a warning to Britain and the 11 other countries that signed Tuesday’s statement.
“Britain initiated and led the current move. But we will also take countermeasures, at our discretion, against other countries that act or will act against Israel. The message to every government that harms us is clear: whoever acts against Israel, Israel will act against them, and they will lose their influence and relevance in the region. Measures against Israel will not go unanswered.”
He also called it “absurd” for Britain to criticise Israel over the Balfour Declaration, issued in 1917 by one of Mr Miliband’s predecessors as Foreign Secretary. The declaration helped set in motion the great-power and later United Nations decisions that led to the establishment of Israel, then part of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.
The declaration, addressed to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland, reads: “His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
Mr Sa’ar said the declaration had “formally recognised the historic right of the Jewish people to re-establish their national home in the Land of Israel, including in Judea and Samaria (the Israeli term for the West Bank).
Its wording was less precise when it came to the protections offered to Palestine’s non-Jewish communities. It referred to civil and religious rights, but not political rights, even though non-Jews made up about 90% of the population in Ottoman Palestine at the time.
The British Government acknowledged that omission in 2017, the centenary of the declaration, when Conservative Foreign Office Minister Joyce Anelay told the House of Lords: “We recognise that the declaration should have called for the protection of political rights of non-Jewish communities in Palestine, particularly their right to self-determination. This is why we support a two-state solution.”
Seen in that historical light, Mr Miliband’s speech on Tuesday amounted to the latest British attempt to redirect a conflict whose modern foundations were laid in Westminster in 1917.
