Absolutely minute": Thatcher, Miliband and Britain's symbolic and ineffectual sanctions against apartheid

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

55% : Total trade in goods and services with Israel was around £6 billion in 2025.
54% : The government's business guidance, published only months ago, described Israel as an attractive market for British companies and explicitly said that the UK remained committed to promoting trade and business ties with Israel and opposed boycotts.
51% : UK government business guidance on Israel
46% : The sanctions, he stressed, would target settlements, "not Israel", and Britain would continue to support what he called "important and valued trade with green line Israel."
45% : Why is Britain maintaining normal trade with Israel at all?
43% : The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry concluded in September 2025 that Israeli authorities and security forces had committed and were continuing to commit genocidal acts in Gaza with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians there, in whole or in part.
43% : UN Commission of Inquiry, June 2026 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.
42% : The government now formally considers Israel's occupation unlawful and, Miliband said, 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.
42% : Reuters report Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, anticipated precisely this problem before Miliband's announcement.
42% : 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.
42% : Yet Britain distinguishes carefully between the illegal settlements and "green line Israel", imposes sanctions on the former and promises continued "important and valued trade" with the latter.
40% : 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.
38% : Israel rejects these findings, and the British government insists it will wait for a final judicial determination before itself using the word.
38% : A UN commission says genocide is continuing in Gaza.
38% : 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.
36% : Thatcher's BBC interview transcript Forty-one years later, listening to Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband's statement to Parliament on Israel and Palestine, the echoes are uncomfortable.
32% : In June this year the Commission said Israel continued to commit genocide, including through the deliberate targeting of Palestinian children.
32% : Amnesty International and the Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem have also concluded that Israel is committing genocide.

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