‘Labour MPs and members back action on Palestine. Leadership must listen and act’

Britain’s Labour Party members now demand that the government take real action on Palestine. This is according to polling published last week by Survation, which puts a number on something many have known for months. Labour members are not divided on Gaza. They are overwhelmingly of one mind, and well ahead of their own front bench. 

Eighty-seven per cent of members back banning trade with the illegal settlements. Seventy-eight per cent want all UK arms exports to Israel suspended, including the components we supply for F-35 fighter jets. Sixty-eight per cent would suspend the UK–Israel Trade and Partnership Agreement. Sixty-two per cent are dissatisfied with the government’s approach to policy regarding Palestine. Just 19% are satisfied. And 58% say that approach matters to their view of who should lead the party. On an issue the leadership has spent two years trying to manage quietly, the membership has reached a clear verdict, and is only getting louder.

We have been here before, in miniature. Members pushed for recognition of Palestinian statehood against a leadership that insisted the time was never right. In September the flag went up over the mission in London, and it was, rightly, called historic. But recognition was always the floor, not the ceiling. The poll is the sound of the membership asking the obvious next question: and then what?

READ MORE: Over 140 Labour MPs call for trade ban on illegal Israeli settlements

This time, though, it is not only the membership that has moved. On 7 June, Melanie Ward — the MP for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy, who ran Medical Aid for Palestinians before she entered the Commons — wrote to Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, alongside more than 140 fellow Labour MPs, calling for a ban on trade with illegal West Bank settlements. The signatories include every Labour chair of a Commons select committee. “It’s time to be clear,” Ward wrote, “that settlements have no viable economic future,” denouncing expansion that on the Israeli government’s own account is designed to make a two-state solution impossible.

This is a neither niche nor fringe issue

This new polling puts paid to the lazy assumption that Palestine is a niche cause of the Labour left. The demands now crystallising into a call to action are those of the Ally to Atrocities coalition: a group of charities including Save the Children, Christian Aid and Medical Aid for Palestinians, now joined by much of the parliamentary Labour Party. These groups are not some wild fringe, rather established activist groups and figures at the core of Labour. Their four headline demands are deliberately unspectacular, calling on the government to “suspend all arms transfers to Israel, including parts for F-35s, ban trade with the illegal settlements, suspend the Trade and Partnership Agreement, and hold those responsible for violations of international law to account.” The most striking thing about the demands is how mainstream they have become.

The government was right to acknowledge Palestinian sovereignty, but that recognition was a first step. It is one thing to recognise Palestine as a state, but it is another to treat it like one. This new polling reveals that Labour members would simply like the Labour government to follow through on that recognition with action.

A duty you decline to schedule is a duty you have decided to ignore.

When it comes to West Bank settlements, half-measures no longer appeal to party members. Ministers said in February that they would take “concrete steps” to counter settlement expansion. Four months on, the settlements have grown and no steps have been taken to counter them. A duty you decline to schedule is a duty you have decided to ignore. 

To bring policy in line with the wishes of Labour Party membership, the government should publish a clear strategy and timetable for meeting its obligations under the International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinion and its provisional measures — including the duty not to aid or assist unlawful conduct — across trade, sanctions, procurement, investment, diplomacy and the regulation of settlement activity.

The Foreign Office itself called the planned E1 settlement expansion “a serious breach of international law,” but the tenders to build it are already out. As Ward’s letter notes, the ICJ has directed third states not to trade with the occupied territory, and Britain already refuses to trade with other illegally occupied land in Crimea, meaning a ban would not even require new primary legislation. The government should enforce a comprehensive ban on UK trade and commercial facilitation linked to settlements, covering goods, financial and professional services and more, through the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018 and any other authority currently available, and prohibit UK persons and companies from helping to entrench the occupation.

The government should not be ‘patient’ over children’s human rights

In Gaza, the severity of the humanitarian situation needs no embellishment: by the Gaza health ministry’s count, more than 900 Palestinians have been killed since the October ceasefire, and not one hospital is fully functioning. Britain should press for immediate, unhindered humanitarian access across the strip, expand support for medical evacuations and specialist care, mobilise international partners to protect hospitals, medical staff and aid infrastructure, and sustain the life-saving funding the moment demands.

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Regarding human rights abuses against children, the government should not be patient. The UK should make compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child central to its policy, leading efforts to end Israel’s military detention, arrest and prosecution of Palestinian children, and pressing for independent monitoring, legal representation and family contact in every case involving a child.

Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem should be treated under one coherent political and territorial framework, with the UK backing Palestinian institutions, public services and development so that self-government is real and a future state is viable, and not just a cluster of enclaves administered from abroad.

Gaza is not a messaging problem

And the government should advocate diplomatically for all of these objectives. Gaza’s future has been handed to President Trump’s Board of Peace, a body Britain sensibly declined to join and which, on the assessment of its own would-be funders, has stalled. Funds have not arrived, disarmament talks are deadlocked, and delays have only given Israel time to seize more land. The UK should say so plainly, build opposition to renewing the Board’s mandate when it falls due in 2027, and work towards a stronger UN framework to replace Resolution 2803 in the UN Security Council. A resolution the party could get behind would have to be grounded in international law, accountability, Palestinian self-determination and equal rights, and built to support Palestinian unity, democracy, and sovereignty.

None of this is to the left of the Labour membership. The poll shows that it is in line with their wishes, and those of a growing share of the parliamentary party as well. The leadership’s instinct has been to treat Gaza as a messaging problem, a line to hold until attention moves on. Members and their MPs have just said clearly that not only is attention not moving on, but that the issue of Palestine is now part of how they will judge who deserves to lead them. Recognition was a big step Labour members should all be proud of. The question the party conference must now answer is whether we meant it.

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