Balfour at 109: Britain must answer for the abuses in Palestine it now condemns

On 8 October, workers in East Jerusalem took down the sign reading "British Consulate General". Britain has had a diplomatic presence in the city since the 1830s: under the Ottomans, under its own rule from 1917 to 1948, and through nearly 60 years of Israeli occupation . Israel ordered the consulate closed in retaliation for the British government's sanctions on West Bank settlements, leaving only a reduced mission in its place. In announcing those sanctions, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told the Commons in plain terms that settlers are carrying out the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. For the first time in a generation, a British government is calling dispossession in Palestine exactly what it is.