There’s been a broad spectrum of reactions to the UK government’s decision to introduce a ban on trade in goods and services from illegal Israeli settlements. These have ranged from “it’s about time”, to “too little, too late” to “pathetic undergraduate politics” (this last from someone I was chatting to after the announcement was made on Tuesday).

But for anyone who has been watching the Occupied Palestinian Territories this year, the regular reports of illegal land grabs and violence enacted by some settler groups on Palestinians in the West Bank, many of whose families have lived there for generations, has been more than distressing. It’s easy to see why the Burnham government felt it needed to take action alongside 11 other countries.

But what was remarkable was the tone of Ed Miliband’s statement to the House of Commons. He spoke of “settler terrorism”, “ethnic cleansing”, the “unlawful” occupation of the West Bank and Israel’s “expansionist agenda via illegal settlements”. It’s a historic shift in tone and policy, writes Mohamed Ibrahim Hafez of Nottingham Trent University.

Hafez believes a key factor in the decision was an advisory opinion released by the International Court of Justice in July 2024 which ruled that Israel’s ongoing presence in the West Bank has no legal basis and confirmed that states have a duty not to support or facilitate the continuation of that situation. He says that the situation was made all the more urgent by the Netanyahu government’s approval of the controversial E1 settlement, which would effectively cut the West Bank in half and make a Palestinian state virtually impossible.

Read more: UK plan to sanction Israel’s illegal West Bank settlements is a historic shift in tone and policy

This is exactly the point of E1. Launching the plan in August 2025, Israel’s far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said the development “buries the idea of a Palestinian state, and continues........

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