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.”