Britain has formally recognised a Palestinian state for the first time. The Prime Minister Keir Starmer said his announcement yesterday keeps ‘alive the possibility of peace’. Given Britain’s history in the region the move is deeply symbolic, even if it is unlikely to change the reality on the ground. Britain will recognise a country with whose past it is deeply enmeshed and correct a historical injustice. But Starmer would do well to learn from Britain’s involvement with Palestine a century ago: promises and words are cheap, a viable two-state solution will require more.

Seventy-seven years after the last High Commissioner left Palestine, his vision of two states for two peoples seems as far away as ever

On 14 May 1948, General Sir Alan Cunningham, the last British High Commissioner for

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