If a bottle of wine from Judea is the greatest threat Britain can identify in the Middle East, the Jews might as well keep pouring.

Every now and then, the world remembers Israel. Actually, that is not quite right. The world never forgets Israel. Israel has been the international community’s favourite hobby for so long that one sometimes wonders what governments would do with themselves if Israel disappeared from the news cycle for a week.

A European government is unpopular? Israel. An economy is struggling? Israel. A government has failed to explain why everything is going badly? Someone, somewhere, will eventually discover that a Jewish house in Judea is responsible.

It is a remarkable arrangement. There are approximately 195 countries in the world, several of them currently experiencing wars, coups, dictatorships, economic disasters, Islamist insurgencies, collapsing institutions and humanitarian catastrophes. And yet somehow, somewhere in Whitehall, Brussels, or Geneva, there is always someone staring at a map of the Middle East and asking:

“But what are the Jews building?”

And so, right on cue, comes modern diplomacy’s favourite warning: the two-state solution is under threat. Britain, naturally, is back on stage. In September 2025, the British government formally recognized a Palestinian state, explicitly presenting the decision as an effort to preserve the possibility of a two-state solution.

Then came the familiar warning. The two-state solution is under threat. The two-state solution is slipping away. The two-state solution is at risk. And what, precisely, is threatening it? Apparently, Jews. More specifically, Jews living and building homes in Judea and Samaria.

In June 2026, the British government said it had strengthened its business-risk guidance so that British citizens and companies should not conduct economic or financial activities in Israeli settlements it considers illegal. It also referred to concerns over construction in E1 and said it had previously joined other governments in warning businesses against bidding for........

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