In October 1985, under enormous pressure from other Commonwealth governments, Margaret Thatcher reluctantly accepted limited sanctions against apartheid South Africa, including restrictions on imports of Krugerrand gold coins. Asked by the BBC what Britain had conceded, she replied “Absolutely minute.” Krugerrands, she pointed out, had “virtually stopped coming” anyway, but the Commonwealth wanted Britain to give a signal. Thatcher maintained throughout those years that she opposed apartheid; what she resisted was the use of Britain’s economic power in ways that might place serious pressure on the South African government.
Forty-one years later, the echo in Ed Miliband’s statement to Parliament is uncomfortable. The Foreign Secretary announced a future ban on goods from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, sanctions against some of those supporting settlement expansion, restrictions on advertising settlement property in Britain, and further limits on arms exports that materially contribute to the occupation. More strikingly, he said the government now considers Israel’s occupation unlawful and agrees that ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is taking place in areas of the West Bank, carried out by settler terrorists while the Israeli government has too often turned a blind eye or actively supported forced displacement.
The admissions matter, and the measures are better than nothing. The problem is the boundary Miliband immediately drew around them. The sanctions, he stressed, would target settlements, “not Israel”, while Britain would continue to support “important and valued trade with green line Israel.” He also said he “wholeheartedly” opposed the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign. Even the legislation needed to stop settlement goods entering British shops will not be in place for another six to nine months.
The issue therefore goes well beyond whether Britain should import dates, wine or cosmetics produced in illegal settlements. There is a genocide taking place in Gaza, part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Why is Britain maintaining normal trade with Israel at all?
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry concluded in September 2025 that Israeli authorities and security forces had committed genocidal acts in Gaza with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians there, in whole or in part. In June this year the Commission said Israel continued to commit genocide, including through the deliberate targeting of Palestinian children. Amnesty International and the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem have also concluded that Israel is committing genocide. Israel rejects these findings, and the British government says it will wait for a final judicial determination before itself using the word. Britain’s reluctance to pronounce it does not make the Palestinians being killed, displaced and deprived of the conditions necessary for life any less dead, displaced or deprived.
Miliband himself described some of that reality to Parliament: more than 70,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza, including at least 20,000 children; almost two million people displaced and confined to a fraction of the territory; hospitals and clinics destroyed; more than 60% of homes in ruins; humanitarian aid repeatedly blocked; children dying while waiting for medical treatment. He called the situation “unconscionable”. In the same statement, however, the government reaffirmed its commitment to normal commercial relations with the state responsible.
Britain’s own figures show what that means in practice. Total trade in goods and services with Israel was £6 billion in 2025, and government business guidance published only months ago described Israel as an attractive market for British companies while saying that the UK remained committed to promoting trade and business ties with Israel and strongly opposed boycotts. The settlement ban leaves almost the entire economic relationship untouched; Reuters reports that its financial impact is expected to be minimal.
Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, anticipated the problem before Miliband’s announcement. She welcomed a settlement trade ban as an important step but warned that settlement goods represent only a fraction of what sustains the occupation, and a fraction Israel could absorb without difficulty. If Britain bans settlement products while continuing arms licensing, intelligence cooperation and other forms of support, she argued, it has not fundamentally changed the relationship. It has “rearranged its communication strategy.”
Palestinian Ambassador to Britain Husam Zomlot has been making much the same argument. In July 2025, responding to another strongly worded international statement on Gaza, he said that the time for statements had passed because Israel would not stop the genocide unless compelled. What was required, he argued, was a full arms embargo, comprehensive sanctions and accountability. A month earlier he had warned that sanctioning a handful of extremist ministers did not confront the political system producing dispossession, occupation and apartheid.
The parallel with Thatcher is not that Britain formally supported apartheid in 1985. Thatcher repeatedly said she wanted it to end. The hypocrisy lay in condemning the system while resisting the economic isolation of the government maintaining it. When international pressure became too great to ignore, she accepted measures small enough to describe herself as “absolutely minute”. Miliband’s language is morally stronger, but the underlying contradiction is familiar: Britain acknowledges an unlawful occupation and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, while a UN commission says genocide is continuing in Gaza and major Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights organisations describe the wider system imposed on Palestinians as apartheid. Yet Britain carefully separates the settlements from “green line Israel”, sanctions the former and promises continued valued trade with the latter.
That distinction may make sense on a customs form. It is harder to defend morally when the Israeli state, its government and its armed forces are integral to what is happening across the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The same government that funds, protects and expands settlements in the West Bank commands the armed forces whose conduct in Gaza has been found by a UN Commission of Inquiry to constitute genocide. The question cannot simply be whether a tomato, date or bottle of wine originated inside or outside the Green Line. It is what Britain is prepared to do to compel the Israeli state to stop.
Symbolic sanctions are not necessarily worthless. The international isolation of apartheid South Africa was built through many acts of boycott, divestment, cultural exclusion and economic pressure whose individual impact could look modest. Their importance was that they accumulated towards isolation. A sanction designed so that normal relations can continue almost untouched is something different.
Britain has had this argument before. For years, comprehensive sanctions against apartheid South Africa were dismissed as ineffective, counterproductive or damaging to British interests. History has not been especially kind to those arguments. A Labour government now faces its own choice: use Britain’s economic, diplomatic and military leverage to help isolate a state facing mounting authoritative findings of genocide and maintaining apartheid, or condemn the crimes while protecting the relationship.
Margaret Thatcher called her concession “absolutely minute”. Ed Miliband calls his a comprehensive reset. For Palestinians, the important question is whether it will stop anything.
This article has been produced with the support of chatgpt (OpenAI).
