Britain did not recognize Israel until 1950, two years after its founding, and was among the last Western democracies to do so. Part of a pattern.
British politicians across party lines have increasingly adopted the language and framing of Palestinian Arab advocacy organizations. The UK Foreign Office has long advised British companies not to trade with Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria (aka the ‘West Bank’), falsely calling them “illegal under international law.” These proposals have not yet become law, but they represent the strongest push toward a ‘West Bank’ boycott in UK political history. Britain has aligned with EU policy requiring special labeling for products made in ‘West Bank’ settlements. Up to Miliband’s announcement, Britain had not announced a full boycott of Israel or the ‘West Bank’. But it has taken multiple steps that function as partial boycotts, especially discouraging trade with settlements, reviewing arms exports, supporting ‘settlement’-specific import bans and enabling local BDS-style actions
Britain’s relationship with Jewish national aspirations stretches back over a century. What began as a diplomatic promise has evolved into a pattern of obstruction, restriction, and in recent years, outright political hostility. Understanding that history matters, especially as British politicians and institutions once again find themselves at odds with the State of Israel.
The Balfour Declaration and Early Betrayal
In November 1917, British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour wrote a letter to Lord Walter Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, declaring that His Majesty’s Government viewed “with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” This became known as the Balfour Declaration and was incorporated into the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine in 1922, making it an obligation under international law.
Britain was entrusted with administering the area of Palestine specifically to facilitate that Jewish national home. Within years, the British administration was already walking it back. Arab riots and political pressure led British officials to restrict Jewish immigration and land purchases, prioritizing quiet over their legal obligations. The promise made to the Jewish people was being quietly dismantled almost from the moment it was written.
The Peel Commission (1937)
Following the Arab Revolt of 1936, Britain appointed a royal commission led by Lord Robert Peel to investigate the conflict in Palestine. The commission’s 1937 report acknowledged frankly that the Mandate was unworkable and recommended partition: a small Jewish state, a larger Arab state, and a British-retained zone around Jerusalem.
Jewish leaders, including Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion, reluctantly accepted the principle of partition as a starting point. Arab leadership rejected it entirely. Britain’s response to Arab rejection was not to hold firm but to keep negotiating downward, ultimately producing a policy far more damaging to Jewish interests than the Peel plan itself.
The commission’s recommendations were never implemented. Instead, they gave way to a policy driven by Arab appeasement and British imperial calculation ahead of an anticipated world war.
The 1939 White Paper
The 1939 White Paper, issued by Colonial Secretary Malcolm MacDonald, is arguably the most consequential and damaging document Britain ever produced with respect to the Jewish people. Issued in May 1939, just months before the outbreak of World War II, it effectively sealed the gates of Palestine to Jewish immigration at precisely the moment when European Jews most desperately needed somewhere to go.
The White Paper capped Jewish immigration at 75,000 over five years and gave Arabs veto power over any further immigration. It restricted Jewish land purchases and proposed a single state in which Jews would remain a permanent minority. Winston Churchill, then not yet Prime Minister, called it a breach of faith. The League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission found it inconsistent with the terms of the Mandate.
Despite those objections, the policy stood. Ships carrying Jewish refugees were turned away from Palestine’s shores. Some were sent back to Europe. The Struma, carrying 781 Jewish refugees, was denied entry and later sank in the Black Sea in 1942, killing nearly everyone aboard.
British immigration enforcement was, in effect, operating during the Holocaust.
The End of the Mandate and UN Abandonment
When Britain finally handed the Palestine question to the United Nations in 1947, it did so without enthusiasm for any particular resolution. The UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) recommended partition into Jewish and Arab states. The UN General Assembly passed Resolution 181 in November 1947, approving the plan.
Britain abstained. It did not vote in favor of the plan it was ostensibly handing off, and it refused to help implement it on the ground. British forces did not intervene to stop Arab attacks on Jewish communities in the months following the vote. In some cases, British officers coordinated with or facilitated Arab forces. The Arab Legion of Transjordan, commanded by British officers, fought against Jewish forces after Israel declared independence in May 1948.
Britain did not recognize Israel until 1950, two years after its founding, and was among the last Western democracies to do so.
The Jordan Question: An Arab Palestinian State Existed
One point that is frequently omitted from British political discourse is that Transjordan, created by Britain from Mandatory Palestine in 1921 and later renamed Jordan, is itself a majority-Palestinian Arab state. Britain carved off roughly 78 percent of the original Mandate territory to create it, placing the Hashemite monarchy in power. Depending on which Arabs are considered to be Palestinans, they make up an estimated 75 to 95 percent of Jordan’s population today.
When British politicians argue for a Palestinian state as though none has ever existed or been offered, they are omitting a significant piece of the history their own country created. Jordan was, in practical terms, the Arab partition of Palestine. That it was governed by a Hashemite rather than a local Palestinian Arab leadership does not change the demographic or territorial reality.
The argument that Palestinian Arab self-determination has been entirely denied is harder to sustain when accounting for this history, a history Britain authored.
In May 2024, the United Kingdom formally recognized a Palestinian Arab state, joining a growing number of European nations in doing so. The move was largely symbolic given that the UK has limited leverage over events on the ground, but it was politically significant. It came at a moment of intense military conflict and was widely read as a rebuke of Israel rather than a neutral diplomatic step.
British politicians across party lines have increasingly adopted the language and framing of Palestinian advocacy organizations. Parliamentary debates have featured accusations against Israel that would not be applied to any comparable military situation involving a different country. Arms export licenses to Israel have been suspended or reviewed under public pressure in ways that had no parallel during other ongoing conflicts involving British allies.
British policy on Palestinian statehood takes place against a historical backdrop in which Britain has repeatedly made decisions that disadvantaged the Jewish population of the region while pursuing its own strategic and political interests.
October 7 and the Genocide Accusation
On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, killing approximately 1,200 people in southern Israel, taking over 250 hostages, and committing widespread documented atrocities. Israel responded with a military campaign in Gaza aimed at dismantling Hamas’s military and governing infrastructure.
Within weeks, British politicians, commentators, and some legal voices were raising accusations of genocide and disproportionate response against Israel. These accusations came before the full scope of the military campaign had unfolded and, notably, before any court had made such a finding. The framing placed the burden of moral scrutiny almost entirely on Israel’s response rather than on the attack that prompted it.
The legal definition of genocide requires proof of intent to destroy a group as such. Israel has consistently stated, and military operations have reflected, objectives of destroying Hamas as a military force, not the civilian population. Civilian casualties in urban warfare against an enemy that deliberately embeds itself among civilians are a genuine and serious humanitarian concern. They are not, by legal or historical standard, automatically evidence of genocide.
Britain’s own military history includes extensive urban bombardment campaigns and counterinsurgency operations that caused substantial civilian casualties. The Troubles in Northern Ireland, the bombing of Dresden, and operations in Iraq and Afghanistan all involved civilian deaths on a significant scale. Britain did not describe its own actions in those conflicts as genocide, nor were its responses routinely described as disproportionate in official British discourse. The standard applied to Israel has not been applied by Britain to itself.
Conclusion
Britain’s record regarding Jewish national aspirations and the State of Israel spans more than a century and includes broken promises, policies that turned away desperate European Jewish refugees that Britain enforced during the Holocaust, military facilitation of Arab forces against Israel in 1948, and a pattern of diplomatic and political hostility that has intensified in recent years.
This is not a record without complexity. Britain also produced the Balfour Declaration, took in some Jewish refugees, and after recognizing it, has maintained formal diplomatic relations with Israel throughout its existence. But when British politicians position themselves as arbiters of proportionality and legality in the Middle East, the sorry historical record of their country’s own conduct toward the Jewish people deserves to be part of the conversation. It has too often been left out.
Dr. Michael L. Wise is a founder and investor in numerous technology companies. He is a graduate of YU and holds a PhD .in Theoretical Physics from Brandeis U., is the author of Israel demography study (BESA).and has published numerous articles about Israel sovereignty and demographics in Judea and Samaria. mlwise@gmail.com
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