Revealed: Israel begged UK to wait for hostages to be freed before recognition of Palestine

This particularly applies to Britain: any hopes of a return to meaningfully cordial relations would be particularly misplaced.

The point of no return was reached more than a year ago, on September 21, 2025.

That was the moment when then prime minister Sir Keir Starmer looked straight into the camera and announced that Britain was formally recognising a Palestinian state, presenting the decision as a historic step towards peace in the Middle East.

“That moment has now arrived,” he said at 10 Downing Street.

But deep inside the tunnels of Gaza, Israeli hostages were still being held captive by Hamas, starved, tortured and sexually abused.

Their families had been in a protracted state of trauma ever since their loved ones had been taken captive, almost two years earlier. What the public did not know was that, behind the scenes, the Israeli government had been desperately urging London not to press ahead with unconditional recognition, warning that the decision could derail delicate negotiations to secure the hostages’ freedom – and condemn those still held captive in Gaza to a fate from which they might never return.

The JC can now reveal that Israeli officials pleaded with the British government not to take a step they feared could strengthen Hamas’s negotiating position at one of the most sensitive moments of the hostage crisis.

An Israeli government official confirmed: “During hostage negotiations Israel pleaded with the UK not to recognise a Palestinian state unconditionally as it could harm the remaining hostages and put their lives at risk.”

Yet Starmer pressed ahead despite those warnings. Just 22 days later, the remaining hostages were released under a ceasefire agreement brokered by Donald Trump.

But when Britain’s prime minister made his decision, their fate was far from certain – and neither he nor the families waiting desperately for news could have known whether the hostages would ever return home.

Starmer insisted that recognising a Palestinian state was “not a reward for Hamas”.

But the terror militia said otherwise.

Weeks before Starmer’s announcement, in June 2025, news of the impending diplomatic move had leaked out.

Senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad described the growing international movement to recognise Palestinian statehood as “one of the fruits of October 7”.

Another senior Hamas figure, Mahmoud Mardawi, greeted recognition by saying: “These developments represent a victory for Palestinian rights and the justice of our cause, and send a clear message: no matter how far the occupation goes in its crimes, it will never be able to erase our national rights.”

The JC’s revelation of the previously undisclosed warnings to the UK by Israeli diplomats raise serious questions about what British ministers knew, how they assessed the risks and why they chose to proceed despite Jerusalem’s objections. As Starmer spoke of peace, 48 Israeli hostages remained in Gaza, some deep inside Hamas’s underground tunnel network. Their families endured an almost unbearable uncertainty over whether they would ever see them again.

Horrifying footage had been released by Hamas showing Evyatar David, reduced to skin and bone, visibly starving as his captors forced him to dig his own grave.

Avinatan Or – born to a British mother - was held for almost two years, his family denied the most basic information as to whether he was even alive. Only after his release did the world learn of the full disturbing story of his captivity, including starvation, abuse and prolonged isolation.

Britain had witnessed the devastating human cost of Hamas’s October 7 massacre through the tragedy of the Sharabi family.

Eli Sharabi, 54, was dragged from his home in Kibbutz Be’eri and held hostage in Gaza for 491 days. His British-born wife, Lianne, 48, originally from Bristol, and their two daughters, Noiya, 16, and Yahel, 13, were murdered by Hamas terrorists.

When Eli was finally released in February 2025, almost unimaginably emaciated after more than 16 months in captivity, he was unaware that his wife and daughters were dead.

He had survived the horrors of captivity clinging to the hope of seeing them again. Only after returning to Israel did he learn that the family he had been dreaming of embracing had been murdered, along with his brother Yossi who had also been taken captive.

His brother Sharon has been standing as a Knesset candidate for Avigdor Lieberman’s Israel Beytenu party.

Commenting on the behaviour of UK ministers, he told the JC: “How can a government make such a significant diplomatic decision while people are still being held captive by the very terrorist organisation that abducted them?

“How can it move forward with recognition without making the release of the hostages a precondition?

“This decision sent a deeply troubling message. When a terrorist organisation abducts civilians, murders families, and holds people hostage, the world must not simply carry on as though this were just another political dispute.

“Proceeding with recognition without first demanding the release of the hostages was seen as granting Hamas a diplomatic achievement while the hostages’ lives remained in danger.”

Sharon is deeply incensed by the way in which the UK seemed to entirely disregard its duty to the members of his brother’s family.

He said: “There is another deeply personal aspect that cannot be ignored: Lianne, Noiya, and Yahel were British citizens.

“They were citizens of the very country that chose to recognise a Palestinian state while Hamas was still holding hostages.

“I expect the British government to explain how this decision can be reconciled with its moral responsibility to fight terrorism, demand the release of the hostages, and ensure that the abduction and murder of civilians do not become something the world can simply move on from without consequences.”

Ziv Abud was at the Nova festival with her boyfriend Eliyah Cohen on October 7. The couple took refuge from the terrorist attack in a bomb shelter, where she lost consciousness beneath the bodies of those who had been killed. She woke up to find her nephew and his girlfriend had been murdered, while Cohen had been kidnapped. It would be more than 16 months before she saw him again, when he was eventually released in February 2025.

Abud told the JC: “As someone who survived October 7 and fought for 505 days to bring Eliyah, now my husband, home from Hamas captivity, the British government’s decision to recognise a Palestinian state while hostages were still being held in Gaza was deeply painful and infuriating to me.

“I felt it was a betrayal of the families who were still waiting for their loved ones at the time.

“Before Eliyah came home, I visited the British parliament twice. I stood before elected representatives and explained: Israel has guarded borders and an army, yet this massacre still happened inside our own country.

“Do not assume that your distance from Israel protects you. The threat of terrorism and extremism does not stop at our borders.”

She added: “The timing of Britain’s decision allowed Hamas to claim a diplomatic achievement while it was holding human beings in tunnels. What message does that send to terrorist organisations? That you can massacre and kidnap people, and ultimately claim a victory before the world?

“I expected the British government to make their release a condition of recognition. I went there twice so they would understand that behind the political discussions were real human beings.

“One of them was the person I love most in the world.”

One senior British politician has expressed enormous anger over the UK government’s unconditional recognition of Palestine despite the pleas of Israel.

The former Labour minister told the JC: “It is a monstrous betrayal of British values and interests that our government should have ignored these warnings from an ally when hostages’ lives were at stake.

“Recognition should always only have been the final stage of an extensive negotiation process, as everyone involved in the region who truly wishes to achieve peace knows. Instead any chance of a long-term resolution has been jeopardised by conceding to the demands of terrorists in the cynical pursuit of Islamist votes in Britain.

“There’s been a lot of talk about how Benjamin Netanyahu being forced from office in this week’s election could improve relations with the UK.

‘The truth is only with a change of government in Westminster will be there any chance of repairing the damage with Israel and restoring the trust we need with the only ally who can defend our interests in the region.”

Although Starmer acknowledged that hostages remained in Hamas captivity, he did not make their release a condition of recognition, nor did he address the appalling conditions in which they were being held.

But the JC can now reveal that the story goes considerably further – and that the British government refused to accept it was Hamas’ reward for the worst massacre since the Holocaust. Mishcon de Reya partner Adam Rose alongside barrister Adam Wagner KC represented the families of British and British-linked hostages held by Hamas and led efforts to secure British government intervention on their behalf.

Rose told the JC: “We were led to believe that recognition ultimately was a transactional decision given to the Arab states who in return made a statement calling for the release of the hostages.

“We were told that recognition was an urgent step required to ensure the ongoing possibility of a two-state solution, which is UK government policy.

“We argued that it rewarded Hamas for its actions on and after 7 October, but at each of four meetings with ever-increasingly senior people, we were told (by assertion) that it didn’t.

“In reality, recognition was Labour policy, and while the timing (with hostages still being held at the time) was incredibly poor and insensitive, the government was determined to go ahead with it.

“In our meeting on September 11, 2025, the then prime minister promised the British hostage families that the UK would widen and deepen sanctions on those giving support to Hamas and other terrorist organisations – despite our regular pressing on this, that has not yet happened.”

Since Andy Burnham took office, relations between Britain and Israel have deteriorated further, with Netanyahu confirming that he has yet to speak to Starmer’s replacement as prime minister and describing relations with the Labour government as “not good”.

The question now is not whether Labour and Israel can repair their relationship, but whether Israel – and, above all, the families who spent those agonising months waiting for their loved ones – can ever forgive what they see as a betrayal at the moment they needed Britain most.

A Foreign Office spokesperson told the JC: “The UK government utilised all possible diplomatic means to advocate for the immediate and unconditional release of all the hostages taken by Hamas terrorists on October 7.

“We are proud to have recognised the State of Palestine, along with over 150 other countries, because statehood is the inalienable right of the Palestinian people.

“There is no evidence to suggest recognition risked the lives of hostages, nor the negotiations mediated by President Trump, which subsequently resulted in an agreement to release the remaining hostages.”