Hendra Wijaya
LONDON: One year after Britain formally recognised the State of Palestine, the UK government is moving to convert that symbolic step into concrete measures, announcing a sweeping package of restrictions on settlement activity that campaigners and diplomats say will be judged by results on the ground this autumn.
The recognition, announced on 22 September 2025 alongside nine other Western governments, was accompanied by a flag-raising ceremony at the Palestinian mission to the United Kingdom in London, where the British position was presented as a long-overdue alignment with international law rather than a new diplomatic initiative.
Husam S Zomlot, the ambassador of the State of Palestine to the UK, argued in an Al Jazeera opinion column marking the anniversary that what ultimately shifted was politics, not policy. He wrote that overwhelming public support for the Palestinian cause in Britain finally forced the government to act, after decades in which successive UK governments endorsed a two-state solution in rhetoric alone while tying any upgrade in Palestinian status to a final peace agreement — effectively handing Israel a veto over the very outcome London claimed to support.
"The British recognition of Palestinian statehood marked a turning point – one that is already bearing fruit a year later," Zomlot wrote, framing the decision as a repudiation of an arrangement that treated Palestinian self-determination as conditional, contingent on "reform" and "good governance" benchmarks he says no other people have been held to.
The most substantive development has come from Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, who announced that the government now regards the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land as unlawful. His package includes bans on settlement goods, settlement services and advertising, a suspension of relevant arms licences, and sanctions directed at companies that build, finance or sell homes in Israeli settlements.
Miliband acknowledged that Britain should have acted sooner, a concession Zomlot cited as evidence that the government understands the gap between its previous language and its obligations. Prime Minister Andy Burnham made a similar point, saying that backing a two-state solution is "meaningless unless we back it up with action."
The legal underpinning for the new policy was laid in July 2024, when the International Court of Justice declared Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory unlawful, as well as the separation wall and the settlements themselves, and characterised the near-total separation of settlers from Palestinians as equivalent to racial segregation and apartheid. The court ruled that the occupation must end "as rapidly as possible" — language that gives Western governments a direct judicial basis for the sanctions London has now announced.
Within days of Miliband's statement, 11 other governments issued a parallel declaration on sanctions and trade with settlements, including Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. The breadth of the coalition, spanning NATO allies and non-NATO European states, marks a notable shift from the earlier group of recognising states.
Analysts say the effectiveness of the measures will depend on how deeply they cut into the financing and supply chains that sustain settlements. The occupation, Zomlot argues, runs on an ecosystem of contractors, lenders, estate agents and Israeli state institutions, and restrictions that stop at import bans without reaching each of those layers risk being symbolic. "For decades, words on Palestine cost nothing while settlements multiplied; now there are consequences," he wrote.
Israel has responded with measures of its own. It has instructed London to close its consulate in occupied East Jerusalem within 30 days, a demand Zomlot says Israel has no legal standing to make because it holds no sovereignty over the territory. On the ground, he writes, the consequences have been far worse for Palestinians.
Since 2 September, Israeli forces have demolished every home in the village of Khirbet al-Tabban and in northern al-Fakhit in the occupied West Bank, displacing roughly 70 people, 28 of them children, according to the ambassador. Settlement expansion has also accelerated: earlier in September, the occupation authorities issued tenders for 3,401 planned housing units under the E1 project, which would sever occupied East Jerusalem from the rest of the occupied West Bank.
In Gaza, roughly two million people remain confined to less than 30 percent of the territory of the Strip, with continued bombing of civilians. More than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire began in October last year, and more than 140,000 tarpaulins and 7,500 tents intended as winter shelter for displaced families remain blocked in the Jordan corridor, Zomlot wrote, urging renewed pressure to secure their delivery.
The coming weeks will provide an early measure of whether the sanctions bite. The olive harvest in Palestine begins next month, and during the first three weeks of last year's harvest the United Nations recorded 126 settler attacks across 70 towns and villages. Zomlot described this year's harvest as "the first real test" of whether punitive measures against settlers have weight on the ground.
He also urged that collective action extend beyond the West Bank, arguing there must be efforts to end what he describes as the ongoing genocide in Gaza and Israel's continuing violations of the ceasefire — a characterisation not accepted by the Israeli government, which has disputed ceasefire compliance allegations.
Drawing on the boycott and sanctions campaign against apartheid South Africa, Zomlot said that campaign was resisted by Western governments, including Britain's, and is now remembered as having lagged behind their own publics. "This time, the UK can lead and be judged differently, if it holds its nerve," he wrote, urging the 12 governments to agree in advance on how they will respond to pressure to reverse course.
He also called for immediate and full implementation of the announced measures, warning that unity among the sanctioning states is the best defence against coercion aimed at splitting them.
The anniversary falls ahead of three significant dates: 110 years since the Balfour Declaration, 80 years since the UN partition vote and 60 years since the occupation began. "Palestine has had enough beginnings," Zomlot concluded. "What it needs now is an ending."
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