The UK Must Break With Israel

‘We got Gaza wrong’, said Andy Burnham just before becoming Prime Minister. The apology was necessary after Keir Starmer’s two-and-a-half years of supporting the destruction of the Strip and losing progressive voters as a result. But if Burnham’s stance made strategic sense, limiting the contrition to his predecessor’s original mistakes in 2023 was too clever by half. Anyone who cares will know that Labour continued to supply Israel with surveillance data from RAF flights and parts destined for its F-35s, while welcoming its leaders to Britain at the height of the genocide. Throughout this bloody saga, ministers have proudly proclaimed themselves ‘Zionists’, tarred pro-Palestine protests as ‘antisemitic’, introduced a law to prevent repeated marches and banned Palestine Action as a ‘terrorist group’.

Palestine activists are therefore sceptical about Burnham’s supposed reset. Some have cautiously welcomed Ed Miliband’s appointment as foreign secretary, as well as hints that the government may take a stronger line on Israeli settlements, sanction additional Israeli ministers and restrict more arms supplies. Still, few believe that Labour can deliver anything like the change that’s needed.

The Genocide Continues

On Gaza, Burnham still talks only of the ‘disproportionate’ character of ‘what has happened’. This is the language of 2023. It fails to recognise that almost three years of deliberate Israeli destruction have inflicted appalling death, hunger and suffering. Gaza contains the world’s largest population of child amputees, and a new UNICEF study shows that the genocide has imprinted itself in children’s bodies, with one in eight showing signs of stunted growth.

Few apart from Israel’s apologists now doubt the genocide. According to polls, half the British public recognise it, despite media suppression of the term itself. Spain, the only other social-democratic government in Europe, has recognised that this is what is happening, as have Burnham’s cabinet ally, Louise Haigh, and Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London. The PM needs to catch up.

The terminology is important. It captures the defining features of Israel’s policy: that it has, in the language of the Genocide Convention, ‘deliberately inflicted’ on the Palestinian national group ‘conditions of life calculated to bring about its destruction’ in Gaza. The Convention binds the UK to ‘prevent and punish’ genocide when the risk is evident, not years later when a court finally delivers a ruling. This duty was triggered in January 2024, when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that there was a ‘plausible risk’ and deemed it necessary to order Israel not to commit genocide.

Now, for more than thirty months, Britain has not only failed in its duty but has remained actively complicit in the crime. The ministers, civil servants and commanders involved in negotiating the RAF’s aid to Israel could even be charged for it. Complicity has been fostered by the Labour Party’s longstanding support of Zionism, the Labour right’s reliance on pro-Israel donors, and its weaponisation of antisemitism to undermine Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. The costs are now apparent in the rubble of Gaza, as well as in Britain’s changing electoral map.

The UK must belatedly fulfil its duty to prevent genocide and make reparation for the policies of the Rishi Sunak and Starmer governments. The genocide is ongoing and nothing has been done to aid the survivors. Meanwhile, Israel continues to expand its control of Gaza and disobey the nominal restrictions imposed by Donald Trump’s ‘peace deal’.

Recognising the genocide means that normal international relations can no longer apply to Israel; the situation demands nothing less than a repudiation of the UK’s alliance with it. The UK-Israel Military Cooperation Agreement, signed by Boris Johnson in 2020, under whose secretive terms Britain has aided the genocide, must be cancelled. Normal economic and cultural relations should be suspended. Members of the IDF who have taken part in the genocide should be denied entry to the UK, and visa-free access for Israelis should be ended to enable this.

Sanction the Occupying State

A coherent anti-genocide policy would certainly require the mother of all U-turns from Burnham. He has retained several ministers in senior roles who bear direct responsibility for the worst policies under Starmer. The temptation will be strong to keep any shift within the bounds of the symbolic and performative.

But that approach has already been tried: Starmer criticised settler excess, banned some weapons sales and sanctioned individual ministers, with little to no impact in winning back former Labour voters. It is betting a lot on Burnham’s communication skills to believe that this will work a second time. The Palestine Action ban also continues to be a major embarrassment. Almost every Labour MP voted for it, with only nine against, even though seven in ten Labour members opposed it. Unless the Supreme Court rules the ban unlawful, Burnham will have to grasp this nettle and lift it.

Labour continues to focus on intensifying violence and displacement in the West Bank, yet its response there seems to be an escalation of Starmer’s token sanctions. Labour Friends of Israel is lobbying against even this, on the grounds that sanctions on settlements will become sanctions on Israel.

But this is precisely what the sanctions should be doing: targeting the occupying state, not just the settlements it has put in place or the individual extremist politicians at its head. The illegality of the occupation was confirmed in 2024 in a comprehensive judgment by the ICJ. The Labour government, despite the faux support for international law of Starmer and his attorney general Richard Hermer, has still to respond to this ruling. A key test of the reset is whether Burnham will rise to the judgment’s challenge.

At the beginning of 2026, Labour might have worried that an anti-Israel stance would seriously undermine Britain’s relationship with the USA. But the fallout of the Iran War means that all bets are off; Israel is increasingly criticised on all sides of US politics. Burnham might reflect that the war into which Israel bounced Trump — and which Starmer aided even while claiming not to (assistance Burnham has apparently decided to continue) — is a major contributor to Britain’s continuing cost of living crisis.

Israel is increasingly the weakest link in both far-right politics and the USA’s imperial network. Breaking with it is not only the right thing to do for Palestine; this could also be how Britain finally begins to move away from its decades-long dependence on the United States. If Burnham and Miliband cannot execute this shift, the Palestine movement, the Green Party, and the left must make it happen.