At the end of May, the defence minister Israel Katz and the finance minister Bezalel Smotrich announced that 22 new settlements would be built in the West Bank.

Katz said the massive expansion, the biggest in decades, was making a "strategic move that prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel and serves as a buffer against our enemies" .

"This is a Zionist, security, and national response - and a clear decision on the future of the country," he added.

Next to Katz was the ultra-nationalist leader Bezalel Smotrich, who lives in a settlement in the West Bank and believes that the land was given to the Jews by God. He is finance minister but also is effectively the governor of the West Bank with sweeping powers over planning.

Smotrich called the settlement expansion a "once-in-a-generation decision" and declared: "Next step sovereignty!"

Everyone in Israel, and the Palestinians in the territories, know that when Smotrich and his allies say "sovereignty" they mean annexation.

Smotrich wants all the land for Jews and has openly discussed finding ways of removing Palestinians.

On hilltop after hilltop in the West Bank are settlements at different stages of their development, from well-established small towns with mature gardens and schools, to outposts with handful of caravans and a militant population of young settlers who often mix religion with extreme Jewish nationalism, firearms and sometimes deadly aggression towards their Palestinian neighbours.

Statistics collected by the UN and peace campaigners show that violent settlers have increased attacks on their Palestinian neighbours since the 7 October attacks.

I went to see how that has affected Taybeh, an entirely Christian village of around 1,500 people.

It is a quiet place that seems to have many more houses than residents. After nearly six hard decades of Israeli occupation, more Taybeh people have been forced to emigrate than now live in the village.

Two nights before the visit, settlers entered the village when most people were in bed. They burned Kamal Tayea's car and tried unsuccessfully to get into his new house, part of a pleasant development overlooking acres of olive groves.  They daubed the walls with graffiti in Hebrew sprayed with red paint.

Kamal, a middle-aged man reassessing whether his decision to move his family to the edge of the village was wise, is installing a network of security cameras.

"We were very, very scared," Kamal said. "I have children and an old mum. Our lives were threatened, and it was terrifying."

I asked him whether Britain's plan to recognise Palestine would make his life any easier.

"I don't think so. It's a big step to have a superpower like Britain support us, but on the ground, it does not change much. Israel is not compliant with any international resolutions or laws.

"It does not listen to any other country in the whole world."

He was referring to the promises made in a short, typewritten letter, dated 2 November 1917, signed by the foreign secretary Arthur Balfour and addressed to Lord Rothschild, a leader of Britain's Jewish community. It was, the letter said, "a declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations".

Britain would "view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people".

It was followed by another promise: "Nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine."

He meant the majority, Palestinian Arabs, though he didn't name them, a point that, 108 years later, still rankles Zomlot

At the UN in New York this week, Britain's foreign secretary David Lammy said the UK could be proud to have helped lay Israel's foundations after 1917. But breaking the promise to Palestinians in the Balfour Declaration had, he said, caused "a historical injustice which continues to unfold".

At the Knesset, Israel's parliament, Simcha Rothman, an ultra-nationalist MP from the National Religious party also had Britain's imperial past in the Middle East on his mind. The British and French had tried to fix borders before, he said, when they took the Middle East from the dying Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Britain couldn't play the imperial power anymore.

Just like Benjamin Netanyahu and Bezalel Smotrich, his party leader, Rothman said the plan to recognise Palestine rewarded Hamas terrorism. He rejected Starmer's offer to postpone recognition if Israel, among other conditions, agreed to a full ceasefire in Gaza and a revival of the two-state solution.

"He is threatening the state of Israel with punishment and thinks that's the way to bring peace to the Middle East. He is not in a position to punish us, and it definitely will not bring peace."

"And it's against justice, history, religion, culture... he's giving a huge reward for Yahya Sinwar [the Hamas leader who led the 7 October attacks and was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza last year].

"Wherever he is in hell today, he sees what Keir Starmer says - and says, 'good partner'."

Back in Taybeh, I had asked a group of leading local citizens who were drinking coffee with the mayor in his office what they thought of the UK's recognition plan.

One of them, a local businessman, said: "Thank you Britain. But it's too late."