Keir Starmer has officially recognised the State of Palestine.

Writing that sentence still feels almost surreal.

For over a century, Britain has been central to the Palestinian story — not as a neutral actor, but as the former colonial power that first promised away a land that was not theirs to give. Recognition now, after decades of denial, is a historic shift.

As a Palestinian who grew up in Gaza and now lives in the UK, my reaction is mixed: a measure of relief that this day has come and frustration that it took so long, arriving only after so much has been destroyed.

The roots of this decision stretch back to Britain’s Balfour Declaration of 1917, which promised a ‘national home for the Jewish people’ in Palestine. Even though the declaration originally called for the protection o

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