Perched high above Sheikh Jarrah, a neighbourhood in East Jerusalem, I used to watch the Friday protests from the British Consulate General – our Embassy to Palestine in all but name. I clearly remember the Palestinian family sitting on a weather-beaten sofa outside a house in the valley, come rain and shine, silently protesting outside the house where they used to live before being evicted for Israeli settlers.
Outside the consulate, I spent most of my time in the West Bank, where I worked alongside the British Support Team. It was tasked with building a capable and peaceful Palestinian security force – providing security for both Palestinians and Israel – ready to take on full responsibility if and when a two-state solution could be reached.
Both the British Consulate General and the British Support Team will now close, two of Israel’s four “counter-measures” against the UK in response to Tuesday’s ban on goods from Israeli settlements.
These sanctioned settlements sit east of the “Green Line” – the 1949 Armistice Agreement that became the recognised dividing line between Israel and captured territory in 1967. It runs straight through the middle of Jerusalem and breaks out to delineate the kidney-shaped West Bank from Israel. The line is at points a six-lane highway, at others parks, concrete walls or high-tech fences. But it’s hugely significant – it represents the de-facto starting point for negotiations on the shape of a future Palestinian state, side-by-side with a secure Israel.
The Green Line is, quite literally, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband’s line in the sand. It brings a clarity to British foreign policy on the issue that we haven’t seen for some time: Britain is beginning to make that distinction consequential. Left of that line – friendship, partnership and goodwill. An understanding that Israel is a remarkable country, innovative from its inception, that has succeeded in the harshest of conditions and despite multiple horrific attempts to erase it. A homeland for the Jewish people, created out of the horrors of the Second World War. Right of that line, a clear statement that Israeli settlements are illegal under international law – and require a fundamentally different relationship. Hence the announcement prohibiting trade.
Alexander at a checkpointThese Israeli settlements are remarkable, but in a different way. Ma’ale Adumim sits just outside Jerusalem: green lawns, swimming pools, high walls, in the middle of a desert. The attempt to connect Jerusalem to this settlement – the creation of the E1 settlement corridor – will put up to 4,000 Bedouin people living in the rocky desert valleys at risk of eviction.
But most memorable to me is Hebron, deep in the southern West Bank. Walking in through an Israeli checkpoint the historic city centre – tall buildings, narrow streets, open squares – is eerily empty; it’s often referred to as a ghost town. Around 700 heavily guarded Israeli settlers live among thousands of Palestinians there, with the military imposing severe restrictions on Palestinian movement. In the silence, it would be easy to believe this was the city. But step through the Israeli checkpoint – a portacabin slung across a street – and a wall of noise, smells, and voices hits you. The Palestinian city has moved to the adjacent streets – markets, cars, shouting, spices, crowds. Normal enough, but for the armed guards sealing off streets; the netting above the markets shielding shoppers from items, used nappies and rubbish, thrown by settlers onto the streets below.
These settlements matter not only for the impact on the ground, but for their strategic impact on the peace process. It has often been said that Israel-Palestine negotiations are akin to negotiating over a pizza while one side (Israeli settlers) eat it. This diminishing pizza is the core reason Miliband says he has chosen to act. The E1 corridor poses a particular threat – it risks splitting the West Bank into north and south, while closing off access to East Jerusalem. Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said the project would “bury the idea of a Palestinian state”.
None of this is to diminish Palestinian terrorism, not just 7 October 2023, but also attacks in Tel Aviv and in the West Bank. Israel’s security is not negotiable, and, having worked across the region, it is clear that such attacks are horrific. But this doesn’t change the logic on settlements.
As a result, the British Government has decided to act in the hope of changing the trajectory. Miliband himself says Britain should have acted earlier, telling me this week that “Andy [Burnham] came in and recognised our previous approach had been too cautious and frankly too hesitant… The ICJ ruled in 2024 that the occupation was unlawful but we haven’t acted until now. And we should have acted earlier”. Britain is not acting alone. France and Canada are taking similar action and a wider group of European countries has backed or is considering restrictions.
As a foreigner who worked in the region, I saw only a fraction of what people there have enduredThe impact will become evident in time, but one thing is clear – these measures cannot be both insignificant and consequential. The strength of the reaction suggests it’s pointing more towards the latter, and closing the Consulate General is significant. It’s highly possible the Israeli position may harden further in response. In addition to Israel’s four counter-measures, Israel’s Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir proposed Israeli support for Argentina on the Falklands; British Shadow Foreign Secretary Tom Tugendhat suggested vital counter-terrorism intelligence sharing and key medicines could be at risk. Clearly this would be a sorry state of affairs if it came to pass.
Irrespective, something had to change. Both sides deserve a better future than another generation of brutal conflict. As a foreigner who worked in the region, I saw only a fraction of what people there have endured. But I saw enough to understand what is at stake, and how quickly the opportunity for a different future is disappearing.
The places I knew are changing. The institutions I worked in are closing. And the political space for the solution they were designed to support is narrowing. Britain has drawn its line. Whether that makes the path to two states any clearer – or simply marks how far away it has become – remains to be seen.
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