Britain must be held accountable for its colonial legacy in Palestine

Right now in the West Bank, Palestinians live under Israeli military law. They can be detained without charge, tried in military courts with conviction rates above 96 per cent, and subjected to emergency regulations that put the occupying power beyond any real legal challenge.

Their Israeli neighbours live under civil law. Two populations, two legal systems, one territory. It’s an arrangement most people would call unjust. What most people don’t know is that Britain designed it.

During 30 years of British rule over Palestine, we created the legal architecture that still operates today – the emergency powers, the military courts, the collective punishment, the dual legal system. We built it. And when we left in 1948, we didn’t dismantle it. It was picked up and carried on.

This is all laid out, in painstaking detail, in a 400-page legal petition put together by leading KCs and historians. The evidence is taken overwhelmingly from Britain’s own archives. It is our records that tell the story – and the story is damning.

The petition was submitted to the government by the Britain Owes Palestine campaign more than six months ago. There has yet to be a government response.

It identifies seven internationally wrongful acts that Britain committed over three decades. It starts with the Balfour Declaration, the 1917 promise to support the creation of a Jewish national home on land that, at the time, was populated by roughly 90 per cent Muslim and Christian Arabs – and without the consent of the people who lived there. That promise directly broke an agreement Britain had already made with Arab leaders to support their independence. We gave our word. Then we broke it.

What followed wasn’t just bad administration. Britain was supposed to preserve the existing order in Palestine. Instead, we transformed the place – its laws, its demographics, its land ownership; the local population had no democratic say in any of it. The high commissioner governed by decree. When a legislative council with an Arab majority was proposed, it was voted down in the House of Commons.

Every avenue of peaceful protest was closed off. So in 1936, the Arab Revolt broke out.

Britain’s response was brutal: collective fines on entire villages. Emergency regulations that stripped away rights of appeal. The chief justice was sacked for criticising the government’s use of emergency powers. Inquests into military killings were scrapped entirely. Soldiers were sent on what were officially called “punitive” raids. What that actually meant was smashing furniture, destroying grain stores, ransacking homes. When reports of these abuses reached London, the colonial secretary admitted to cabinet that he’d deliberately kept any mention of police “atrocities” out of his statements to parliament.

In three years, at least 5,000 Palestinians were killed and 15,000 wounded. Emergency powers and collective punishment were used almost exclusively against Palestinian Arabs. Military courts had no appeals process, no external oversight. And here’s the kicker: when Britain finally left in 1948, parliament passed an act that retroactively immunised every British official from prosecution for anything they’d done during the mandate. On the way out, they covered their tracks.

That continuity matters, because it’s not just history. This year, Israel’s Knesset passed a law imposing a mandatory death penalty on Palestinians tried in those same military courts – a law the UN high commissioner for human rights called a war crime. The petition shows that, during the mandate, Britain’s military courts could impose the death penalty on Palestinians with no appeal, under regulations that bypassed civilian judges entirely. The system has evolved, but its bones are British.

Keir Starmer is a former human rights barrister and was director of public prosecutions. He built his legal career on the idea that accountability matters. Recognising the state of Palestine was the right thing to do. But recognising a people’s rights while refusing to look at your own role in taking them away is wrong.

On this day, 15 May, every year, Palestinians mark the start of the expulsion of 750,000 people from more than 400 villages to establish the state of Israel, an event known as the Nakba, which means “catastrophe” in Arabic.

What Britain did in the past ripples into the present, and what we do today can have huge consequences for the future. It’s why apologies matter.

It is time for Britain to acknowledge its actions, past and present. It may even help to better position our country in the mammoth task of helping to find peace in the Middle East.

Dale Vince OBE is the founder of Ecotricity