Britain must look back to see a way forward in Palestine and Israel
As British lawyers trained in international law who come respectively from Palestinian and Zionist traditions, we are struck by Britain’s insistence on presenting itself as a guardian of the rules-based international order while refusing to reckon with one of its gravest breaches: its repressive occupation of Palestine between 1917 and 1948. The catastrophe in Gaza did not arise in a vacuum; it is inseparable from the decisions Britain made when it held power over the country.
These decisions are not only matters of interpretation or opinion, but of law. Based on primary archival evidence and the legal standards applicable at the time, we, together with a team of other lawyers and historians, have produced a 400-page petition documenting Britain’s violations of international law in Palestine. Supported by the Britain Owes Palestine campaign, it records a pattern of abuses that reshaped the country against the will and rights of its indigenous population.
With Gaza’s future now deeply uncertain, some argue that revisiting a century-old record is a distraction. We believe the opposite. No credible peace process can succeed without acknowledging the legal and moral foundations on which this crisis was built.
The First Global Refugee Crisis
With the 1917 Balfour Declaration, Britain promised the “Jewish people” a “national home” in Palestine, influenced partly by European antisemitism that embraced political Zionism in the previous decades as a solution to what was effectively the first global refugee crisis. Jewish flight from European persecution which began in the 1880s -1900s, would repeat itself in the 1930s and 1940s.
When British forces occupied Palestine in 1917, more than 90 percent of the population was Arab - Ottoman Muslims and Christians who had lived there for centuries, alongside a small Ottoman Jewish community, as well as an even smaller number of Jews who had recently migrated from Europe. By 1944, the country’s population had grown from 649,000 to 1.6 million, with 74 percent of immigrants being Jewish. As author George Antonius wrote in 1938, while the treatment of Jews in Europe was "a disgrace to its authors and to modern civilisation," placing the burden on Arab Palestine was a "miserable evasion" of global responsibility.
The Abuse of Occupation Law
Between 1917 and 1924, Britain was a belligerent occupant of Ottoman Palestine. It unlawfully transformed the territory's political, social, and demographic character, laying the foundations for a Jewish state without consent from the indigenous population.
From 1924 to 1948, Britain exercised authority in Palestine without acquiring sovereign title from Turkey, governing through a Mandate framework that departed from both occupation law and the League of Nations’ own constitutional principles.
Legalised Violence
Britain also institutionalised violence in Palestine, particularly during the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt. Emergency powers included the death penalty, collective punishment, house demolitions, and administrative detention enforced through military courts with no appeals. In 36 months, some 528,000 Palestinian Arabs - 39 percent of the entire population - passed through detention, mostly without trial.
This legacy persists. The International Court of Justice noted in its 2024 advisory opinion that Israel's punitive house demolitions in the occupied West Bank are based directly on British emergency regulations. The emphasis on rule by law rather than rule of law remains evident in Israel's military occupation today.
Colonial Origins of Partition
Britain introduced comprehensive policies separating Jewish and Palestinian Arab communities across self-government, land, immigration, labour, education, and economy. It then unilaterally abandoned Palestine in 1948, having created the conditions for partition and intercommunal violence, entrenching divisions that persist to this day.
Whatever one’s views about the future governance of Israel/Palestine, it is necessary to understand that the idea of a two-state solution emanates from British policies of division that favoured the rights of a migrant Jewish community over its indigenous Arab majority.
Perhaps the only saving grace of the present is that conditions are ripening for alternative approaches. For the British Government to help bring peace to the region, it should therefore acknowledge its role and formally apologise. Reparative measures could also include investment in education in Palestine and Britain, and museum exhibitions that honestly confront this history.
Britain is in a unique position to make a difference because it owes a special debt to the Palestinian people and remains deeply connected to the fate of the Jewish people. But any honest conversation about peace must begin with truth. To see a way forward, Britain must first be willing to look back.
Victor Kattan FHEA is an Assistant Professor in Public International Law at the University of Nottingham School of Law.
Danny Friedman KC is a barrister specialising at the interface between crime, human rights and public law, with additional focus on public international law.
Both were part of the team that prepared Britain Owes Palestine's 400-page legal petition, which was delivered to Downing Street in September 2025.
