---
title: "Miliband Calls Israel’s Conduct a Stain on the World and Pledges New Sanctions"
description: "Britain’s foreign minister told Labour’s conference the party’s critics on Palestine ‘were right’, and promised action"
author: "Arthur Wren"
published: 2026-09-28T15:35:21Z
modified: 2026-09-28T18:18:40Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/miliband-calls-israel-s-conduct-a-stain-on-the-world-and-ple-f7d5c5
language: en
tags: ["israel", "gaza", "west-bank", "labour", "sanctions", "europe", "mideast"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Miliband Calls Israel’s Conduct a Stain on the World and Pledges New Sanctions

*Britain’s foreign minister told Labour’s conference the party’s critics on Palestine ‘were right’, and promised action*

By Arthur Wren · September 28, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/miliband-calls-israel-s-conduct-a-stain-on-the-world-and-ple-f7d5c5

## In brief

- Ed Miliband called Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank ‘a stain on the conscience of the world’
- He told Palestinian rights campaigners ‘you were right’ and drew a standing ovation at Labour’s Liverpool conference
- He pledged new sanctions and vowed to ‘match words with actions’, without naming targets or dates
- Britain this month announced settlement sanctions and a ban on arms exports that ‘materially contribute to the occupation’
- Miliband said the UK’s settler sanctions had ‘mobilized the international community, country after country’

The foreign secretary of Britain stood up at his party’s conference in Liverpool and said, in public and on the record, what his government had until lately avoided saying. Ed Miliband called the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank “a stain on the conscience of the world”, Al Jazeera reports, and he pledged new sanctions, promising a tougher British line on both territories.

The line that carried the hall was the admission. “You were right,” he told the campaigners who had spent years shouting at Labour from outside its fence, according to [Middle East Eye](https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/we-hear-you-you-were-right-ed-miliband-tells-people-outraged-over-palestinian-plight). Then he set out the new formula: “We call out the evidence of war crimes in Gaza. We call out Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. And we match words with actions.” He drew a standing ovation, [Democracy Now reported](https://www.democracynow.org/2026/9/28/headlines/uk_foreign_minister_ed_miliband_blasts_israeli_government_at_labour_conference).

Some of the action already exists. Earlier this month Miliband declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and announced comprehensive sanctions on Israeli settlements together with a ban on all arms licences and other exports that “materially contribute to the occupation”, Middle East Eye notes. On Sunday he told the delighted conference that Britain’s move to sanction settlers had “mobilized the international community, country after country”, according to the [Times of Israel](https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/uks-fm-miliband-tells-delighted-party-confab-our-move-to-sanction-settlers-has-mobilized-the-international-community-country-after-country/), which reported that he framed all this as a reset of policy under Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s government.

Resets are easier announced than measured, and the new sanctions pledged from the platform came unnamed. No targets, no dates, no figures were given in the reporting. What the government has done so far is real enough to list: settlement sanctions, an export ban, a form of words that no British foreign minister had used before. What it will do next is a promise.

The setting gave the confession its weight. Only days earlier the same city had seen a [silent vigil over jailed Palestine protesters](https://rews.cc/a/a-silent-vigil-in-liverpool-a-vanishing-olive-harvest-in-al--18ef41), billed by its organisers as an integrity test for Burnham. And while delegates applauded in Liverpool, Israel’s far-right finance minister was [calling for the West Bank to be treated as Gaza was](https://rews.cc/a/do-in-the-west-bank-what-we-did-in-gaza-smotrich-calls-for-w-94451f), and the army had sealed the territory for Sukkot.

None of this is to sneer at words. Governments move by words before they move by law, and “illegal occupation” is not a phrase that falls from a British minister’s mouth by accident. But words are the cheap part, and the applause of one’s own party cheapest of all. Sanctions, unlike ovations, can be counted. What was pledged in Liverpool has a speaker and a stage; what it contains, and when it bites, so far it does not.