Britain created the template for Israel's occupation. It must own up to its crimes in Palestine

The recent report that Israel has brought no prosecutions for the killing of Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank since the start of this decade is a stark indictment of the failure of justice, accountability and the international rules-based order.

Just last month, 10 Palestinian civilians were killed in the occupied West Bank by Israeli settlers and police, including a mother, father and their two young sons who were shot in the head while coming home from a shopping trip. 

But what the report finds is not an aberration. It is the latest expression of a familiar and deeply damaging pattern: violence carried out against the Palestinian people by an occupying power, followed by silence, delay and impunity. 

That pattern has a disturbing precedent in Britain’s own occupation of Palestine between 1918 and 1948. During the Arab Rebellion of 1936-39, British authorities did not merely respond to unrest; they constructed a legal and military framework that normalised collective punishment, arbitrary detention, and coercive force while restricting access to the courts.

In effect, the law was not used to restrain violence, but to authorise it. The result was a system in which abuse could be committed and then insulated from accountability, strikingly similar to what we see play out today. 

Darkest day

One of the clearest and darkest examples is al-Bassa in September 1938, where there are strong grounds to conclude that the British army carried out a massacre of around 50 Christian and Muslim Palestinians in reprisal for a roadside bomb. It is among the most egregious episodes uncovered from the period.  

Britain cannot credibly speak about upholding international law in the Middle East while refusing to examine its own role in shaping the conditions that made it possible

That is why the Britain Owes Palestine campaign is so timely. Working with human rights lawyers and historians, the campaign has submitted a 400-page legal petition to the government documenting alleged unlawful acts and systemic abuses during the period. 

The petition is not an exercise in retrospective blame. It is a complex legal and moral case that Britain’s conduct in Palestine was itself wrongful, and that the legacy of that conduct continues to shape the genocide and other breaches of international law taking place in Gaza and the West Bank today. 

It sets out how Britain occupied Palestine, upheld the Balfour Declaration, denied the Palestinian Arab majority’s meaningful self-government, and helped entrench a political order in which demographic transformation and coercive control became normalised. 

It then argues that the emergency powers used to suppress the Arab Rebellion made violence and collective punishment “legal” in name, while also enabling unlawful coercion to occur with impunity by removing access to the courts.

The petition describes this as “rule by law” rather than rule of law, and says the system amounted to statutory martial law, with military power overriding ordinary protections and judicial oversight. 

This is not merely a historical critique. Britain’s methods in Palestine helped create a legacy of violence whose effects were not confined to the Mandate period. The technologies of repression, such as collective punishment, house demolitions, punitive searches, coercive interrogation and impunity, were made in Britain, left behind in Palestine, and are still in use in the modern day. 

Official apology

The campaign therefore asks the British government for more than vague expressions of concern. It asks for a search for unreleased archives, a full public response, an acknowledgment of wrongful acts, an official apology in parliament, and serious consideration of reparations and other forms of accountability.

These are not symbolic gestures. Britain has long prided itself on being a nation that values justice, human rights and fairness. These principles define who we are today. Therefore, it is time that we stand up for those values, honour our national ideals, and make amends for the mistakes of the past, so that we may move forward with integrity as a country. 

I recently joined a cross-party group of 45 MPs and peers in signing an open letter urging the prime minister to respond to the petition and acknowledge Britain’s historic role with an official apology. Six months after its submission, the government has yet to respond. 

Britain cannot credibly speak about upholding international law in the Middle East while refusing to examine its own role in shaping the conditions that made it possible. If impunity is tolerated in the present, it is because it was normalised in the past.

And if history is repeating in the West Bank, Britain has a duty not only to recognise it, but to own its historic part in facilitating it. 

The question is not whether Britain bears responsibility for decades of violence in Palestine. The question is whether it will finally admit it. 

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.