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During the 10 years I was director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, we worked with a clear theory of change. It was rooted in the recognition that the problem that required change was Israel’s imposition of a system of colonialist racist domination over all Palestinians – those living on any part of the territory of historic Palestine, between the river and the sea, as well as those forced to live in exile and denied their right of return. Dismantling that system would require ongoing Palestinian resistance within the framework of international law, supported by a global solidarity movement that could mobilise popular pressure to compel action from governments, public bodies, companies and corporations which would isolate Israel through boycott and sanctions until it ended its oppression. It is a theory of change rooted in the belief that democracies like the UK’s, although deeply flawed, are susceptible to public pressure.
So a response to Ed Miliband’s announcement this week of a ban on products from illegal Israeli settlements and on the provision of services to support those settlements needs to begin with that understanding of the dynamics of change. This announcement would not have come without the mobilisation of huge pressure by the solidarity movement, especially in the three years since Israel unleashed its genocide in Gaza. It is that pressure, and the fundamental shift in public opinion that shows 50% of the public now support a settlement ban, with only 16% opposing it, that has motivated Burnham’s incoming government to act.
A ban on settlement goods has been a core demand of the movement for many years and so it is right that we welcome it as a victory. But it is a demand that has always been framed as a necessary first step on the path to ending all British complicity with Israel’s system of oppression.
So, for now, one cheer but not the full three.
The ban is a significant advance in a number of ways, which helps explain the ferocity of the reaction from the Israeli government and pro-Israel voices here in the UK including, shamefully but predictably, some leadership figures within the Jewish community. As long ago as July 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) affirmed the illegality of the occupation. Although not framed as such by Miliband, accepting the ICJ’s opinion regarding the illegality of the occupation is a step towards meeting the UK’s responsibilities in accordance with that opinion: both the obligation not to aid and abet the occupation, and the more positive obligation to act to end it.
There is a shift in language, and both an acknowledgement and condemnation of the policy of ethnic cleansing being enacted in the West Bank, and the designation of settler violence as acts of terrorism. There is a reinforcement of the suspension of some arms licences by extending the criteria to arms that support illegal actions in the West Bank, not just in Gaza. There is also an inadequate but significant shift in the language around genocide. Whereas Starmer and Lammy engaged in active denial of genocide, with both stating that they knew the definition and didn’t apply it to Israel’s actions in Gaza (statements that made clear they actually didn’t know the definition, or were happy to ignore it), the new line is no longer a denial, but an assertion that this needs to be determined by the courts. That does not change the government’s position materially, but the rhetorical shift does open up new avenues of pressure.
By accepting the plausibility of the case put by South Africa, and opening an investigation, the ICJ affirmed the responsibility of third-party states to take action to ensure they were not aiding and abetting genocide. Starmer sought to evade these responsibilities by denying the plausible case for genocide, whilst ludicrously maintaining a rhetoric of support for the work of the ICJ. Pressure can now be bought to bear on Burnham to accept that, having acknowledged the possibility of genocide, and stated his support for the ICJ process, he must now also accept the responsibility – way beyond the measures announced this week – to ensure the UK is acting to prevent genocide.
The key immediate task for the Palestine solidarity movement is to apply pressure to ensure the measures announced are fully and comprehensively enforced. It is crucial that the government sees the commitment through to include not just products but services, which if interpreted correctly will include the UK taking action against Israeli banks. Logically, and in the spirit of what has been announced, it should also lead to action to ensure no public body is investing funds in complicit companies, including local authorities.
But beyond that we need to apply pressure to force the government to address what is required to truly end all UK complicity in Israel’s crimes. This means, while welcoming this initial step, pressuring the government to acknowledge the illogicality, immorality and unsustainability of its new position. On the one hand, the government is acknowledging its responsibilities under international law not to be complicit in the commission of crimes, but on the other hand, both Burnham and Miliband retain the rhetoric of regarding Israel as a key democratic ally with whom they wish to maintain a flourishing relationship and continue normal trade.
This, as Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, puts it, amounts to wanting to distance oneself from the crime but remain on good terms with the criminal. Miliband reaffirmed the tired canard about support for Israel’s right to exist – no state has such a right. The key question he hasn’t addressed is: “Do you believe Israel has a right to exist as a state which practises a doctrine and policy of Jewish supremacy, denying rights to Palestinians?”
Failing to acknowledge that Israel is not a democratic state overseeing an illegal occupation, but a state maintaining a system of illegal racist domination has been the bulwark against sanctioning it, and the cause of the hostility towards the BDS movement, which Miliband reiterated in his statement. It is what gives fuel to the lie that BDS is motivated by antisemitism: if Israel is a liberal democracy, then why sanction it unless you have sinister motivations?
Of course the pro-Israel lobbyists currently raging at Miliband level the same accusation about the settlement ban and, to his credit, the foreign secretary has not allowed them to derail the new policy. The test will come when Miliband confronts the reality that these pro-Israel voices are correctly asserting: the impossibility of distinguishing between the settlement economy and the wider Israeli economy. It is true, not because Israel cannot correctly label produce produced in settlements if it wants to do so, but for the deeper reason that the settlement economy is deeply embedded in the wider Israeli economy. Beyond that reality, once you have accepted, as Miliband now appears to have done, that the charge of genocide against Israel is at the very least plausible, then the moral case for maintaining normal relations with the state becomes impossible to sustain.
So pro-Israel voices may be right that sanctions against Israel are likely, now the Rubicon has been crossed, to open the floodgates to full BDS. The task of the solidarity movement is to build the body of pressure that will burst those gates wide open.
Ben Jamal was the director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign from June 2016 to May 2026.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Zeteo UK.
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