Why Britain could face demands to pay Palestinians reparations

Tension has been brewing ahead of the Commonwealth Summit in Samoa this week, with conversation around the biennial event dominated by demands from Caribbean leaders that Britain pay reparations for its colonial past.

Initially, the British government insisted the issue was off the agenda, saying it would neither pay reparations nor apologise.

Defying British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, leaders of 15 Caribbean nations called for a communique to discuss reparations.

The Commonwealth is a voluntary association of 56 countries, mostly former British colonies.

Now Starmer appears to have significantly shifted his position, saying on Thursday afternoon in Samoa that he is “open to discussing non-cash forms of reparatory justice for slavery”.

This would fall short of the demands many have made.

However, British Chancellor Rachel Reeves warned on Thursday that paying monetary reparations would cripple Britain economically.

The amount that Britain owes in total is a hotly contested subject, with the American Society of International Law and the University of the West Indies claiming that the country owes a staggering £18.8 trillion in compensation for slavery and colonialism.

The controversial report carries considerable weight, since it was led by International Court of Justice (ICJ) judge Patrick Robinson.

Meanwhile Joshua Setipa from Lesotho, a leading contender for next secretary-general of the Commonwealth, has suggested Britain owes India “more money than it has”.

India now has a larger economy than Britain. 

A Downing Street source has reportedly suggested that while a monetary payout remains off the table, Britain could deploy reparatory measures like restructuring financial institutions and providing countries with debt relief. 

Philip Davis, the prime minister of the Bahamas, said: “For me, I don’t know that money, in and of itself, could adequately compensate for the wrongs of the past. The ghost that haunts us today cannot be, in my view, dispelled by a monetary gift.”

A draft version of the summit’s final communique does not reference reparations directly but says that leaders “agreed that the time has come for a meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation towards forging a common future based on equity”.

'I don’t know that money, in and of itself, could adequately compensate'

 - Prime Minister Philip Davis

All this raises questions about who else might claim Britain owes reparations from outside of the Commonwealth, particularly since the question of reparations owed by another country was raised by the ICJ in July this year.

That case regarded Israel and the Palestinians - with ICJ judges ruling in their advisory opinion that Israel must pay reparations for damags caused by its occupation.

Yet there have also been calls in recent years for Britain to pay Palestinians reparations as well.

If Britain pays any forms of reparations to other countries, it may well face renewed demands from the Palestinian Authority too.

Palestine and the Commonwealth

No Middle Eastern country chose to join the Commonwealth when it was established in 1949, after much of the British Empire had been dismembered.

But after the 1967 war, with Israel occupying Palestinian territory, Commonwealth summit communiques customarily discussed the Palestinian issue - up until the 1990s.

By contrast, this year’s summit communique is not set to address Israel’s current war on Gaza or illegal settlements in the other occupied Palestinian territories, which the ICJ ruled in July are illegally occupied.

This makes the Commonwealth far removed from its impactful role during the campaign against apartheid in South Africa, when it expelled the country from the Commonwealth in protest against its policies.

In 1997 under Yasser Arafat’s leadership, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation requested that the Palestinian Authority become a member of the Commonwealth.

This was on the grounds of a historic connection with Britain, since Britain controlled Palestine with a British Mandate for decades before the state of Israel was created and around 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their lands.

But although Commonwealth leaders said they welcomed the possibility, they deferred the decision.

The issue has not been raised again at Commonwealth summits and Britain itself still refuses to recognise the state of Palestine.

Academic David Erdos suggested ahead of the summit that the Commonwealth “should explicitly reiterate its welcome of potential Palestinian membership and set out a realistic pathway to this that is in no way dependent on Israel’s actions or other factors, including the degree of State recognition”.

But the Commonwealth demands that member states be democratic and respect the rule of law, which would likely require significant reforms from the Palestinian Authority.

Meanwhile, the discussion around reparation draws comparison with past calls for Britain to apologise and pay reparations to the Palestinians, although they have been less amicable in tenor than Commonwealth demands.

Calls for a British apology

In 2017, the Palestinian Authority threatened to sue Britain if it did not apologise for the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which established Britain’s goal to create a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. The Conservative government responded by affirming it was “proud” of the declaration.

Then, in 2020, Palestinian billionaire industrialist Munib al-Masri, who had been a close friend of Arafat, announced he aimed to sue the British government over the Balfour Declaration and crimes he said Britain committed during the Mandate.

The background to this was that during World War One, British officials privately promised Sharif Hussein, the sharif of Mecca, that if he revolted against the Ottoman empire he would be granted an independent Arab state.

Peter Shambrook proved in a book published last year that the promised state included Palestine.

Hussein duly revolted - but the British refused to uphold their end of the bargain, with the Balfour Declaration contradicting their promise.

In 2022, Al-Masri revealed he had drawn up a 300-page dossier compiling evidence of British abuses against the Palestinians under the Mandate - including arbritary killings, torture and home demolitions as collective punishment.

The billionaire himself had been shot and wounded by British troops as a child in 1944.

“I saw how people were harassed” by the British, he told the BBC. “We had no protection whatsoever and nobody to defend us.”

Barrister Ben Emmerson KC, a former UN special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, said the evidence showed “shocking crimes committed by certain elements of the British mandatory forces systematically on the Palestinian population”.

British historian Matthew Hughes documented in a 2019 book how British “soldiers and police detained 528,000 people, for varying periods of time from days to years, some imprisoned more than once, in varying places, and this total - that exceeds the entire Muslim male population of Palestine in 1938 - omits any detentions from December 1936 to August 1937. 

“It equals 37 per cent of the entire population of Palestine in 1938.”

Seeking an official apology, al-Masri presented the dossier to the British government in late 2022.

But no apology has been forthcoming. 

The demand for reparations

Many have criticised calls for a British apology. 

Joseph Massad, a professor at Columbia University and an MEE contributor, argued in 2022: “Rather than pursuing lawsuits to extract an unlikely apology from an unrepentant colonial power such as Britain, the proper course of action should be to demand reparations for the crimes committed and destruction wrought by the British against the Palestinian people.”

In September 2023, shortly before the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called for Israel, the US and Britain to pay reparations to Palestinians.

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“[W]e will persist with our pursuit of accountability and justice at the relevant international bodies against Israel because of the continued Israeli occupation of our land and the crimes that have been committed, and are still being committed against us; as well as against both Britain and America for their roles in the fateful Balfour declaration,” he said.

“We call for reparations, we call for compensation in accordance with international law.”

Shawan Jabarin, general director at rights NGO Al-Haq, and Ralph Wilde, a law lecturer at University College London, said Britain is liable to pay reparations for its conduct during the Mandate.

“By failing to provisionally recognize Palestinian statehood in 1920s,” they wrote after Abbas’ speech, “instead, holding onto the territory for a quarter of a century in order to enable the Balfour pledge to be realized, the UK violated international law.”

They added that any state which was a member of the League of Nations at the time now has the standing to file a case against Britain to the ICJ, “to ask the Court to provide the reparations sought by the Palestinian people”.

This legal opinion is contested - but indicates that Britain could find itself facing such a legal challenge in the future. 

The British government continues to assist Israel militarily in several ways during the current war, with hundreds of UK military flights over Gaza assisting Israel.

In a speech to the summit on Friday, King Charles appeared to reference reparations demands by saying that “none of us can change the past” but countries can find “creative ways to right inequalities that endure”.

Palestine remains off the summit’s agenda.