Eamon Dyas
Yesterday 9 september 2026 the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Edward Miliband, announced that the Labour government was going to impose sanctions that “will target illegal settlements and settlement expansion” in the west Bank which he described as “ethnic cleansing” and which the Israeli government had done little to prevent.
He said that this announcement represented “a new approach” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, by the British government which “not only calls out injustice and suffering but acts”.
The announcement was made in a great cloud of moral satisfaction echoed and inflated by the media. At last the behaviour of Israel that for so long had exposed the hypocrisy and shallowness of Western values and been a cause of embarrassment for our Western leaders was being called out and responded to.
This feeling was further enhanced by the announcement that Canada and France would be emulating Britain’s actions and then we heard that Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden would also be taking action. The western world, it seemed, had begun to change its stance on the issue of Israeli expansion.
But after the initial cloud of moral satisfaction began to evaporate the landscape it revealed didn’t seem to have change all that much. In fact, a closer look at the announcement by the British Foreign Minister reveals that the programme of “a new comprehensive sanctions regime” will only begin to be introduced “over the next six to nine months”.
To any reasonable mind the question arises as to how is it that sanctions can be imposed on Russia at the stroke of a pen but require “six to nine months” when Israel is concerned. If what is happening in the West Bank is ethnic cleansing then surely the sooner these sanctions are imposed the sooner they would act as an inhibitor against its continuation. Providing a long timetable for their introduction is only inviting those perpetrating the ethnic cleansing to speed up their activities.
This lethargic approach contrasted with the immediacy of the action taken by the Israeli government in response to the announcement by the Western governments. Within hours of that announcement Israel had closed the British consulate in occupied East Jerusalem accredited to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.
The Israelis also announced that Britain would no longer be able to participate in the US-led coordination mission for Gaza, that British training of Palestinian Authority forces in the West Bank would be terminated, and that some elected UK officials and other nationals would be banned from entering Israel.
The speed of this Israeli reaction alongside the speed exhibited by the West when it came to sanctions on Russia raises the very intriguing question as to why it’s going to to take between six to nine months for the West to turn what up to that point remains merely a threat of sanctions into actual sanctions?
Could it be that there is no intention to actually impose sanctions but merely to give the impression to a growing frustrated electorate that their governments are actually doing something?
This explanation gathers weight when it is realised that elections are due to take place in Israel next month in which there is a very real chance of the current Israeli government being replaced. Should that be the case then the prospect of different personnel in government will be used by the West as the excuse for suspending the threat even though, given the nature of Israeli politics there is little prospect of any Israeli government reversing the actions of the current one,
Statement by Jewish Voice for Liberation
JVL Statement: On the UK’s Sanctions on Settlement Goods and more
JVL welcomes the sanctions on Israeli settlement goods announced by Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband in response to Israel’s multiple crimes against the Palestinian people. The moves, while late and insufficient, represent an advance on the inaction of previous governments, including that of Keir Starmer. We welcome the ban on provision of services supporting the construction of illegal settlements and the outlawing of events, like the recent one in Edgware, promoting the sale of settlement properties.
This is not a case of unilateral UK action. It aligns Britain with a dozen other countries making similar moves, including France, Canada and Ireland. Spain has gone further and implemented a full arms embargo, which we urge Britain to emulate. After years of ineffectual words and occasional action against a few individuals, at last we can see a potentially significant shift towards holding the state of Israel to account.
Much more needs to be done and we welcome the Foreign Secretary’s acknowledgement that campaigning by people of all backgrounds, nationally and internationally, and young people in particular, has a positive role to play. Demonstrations against what the government has clearly identified as ethnic cleansing are not “hate marches”.
We condemn accusations of antisemitism (or to quote Mike Huckabee, “Jew Hate”) levelled against Ed Miliband, who is Jewish, for the steps he has outlined today. We join with the Foreign Secretary in rejecting all attempts to associate British Jews collectively with the actions of a rogue state, evoking a classic antisemitic trope. All too often it is Israel’s supporters rather than its critics who conflate British Jews with Israel, attempting to suppress criticism of Israel’s actions with allegations of antisemitism. Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, who claimed that sanctions will have a “negative impact” on British Jews, has shown no compassion for the Palestinian people and explicitly referred to Israel’s army in Gaza as “our heroic soldiers”.
Responses from other Israel apologists are also predictable and pathetic. For example, MP Peter Prinsley, former vice-chair of Labour Friends of Israel, claimed the time is not right for sanctions. But for all who take his view, there will never by a right time to hold Israel to account.
We hope that the limited UK action announced today, along with other nations, will at least slow down the pace of Israel’s heinous and ongoing assaults on the Palestinians. But we are not optimistic. Israel has already retaliated by closing the British consulate in Jerusalem and banning a number of pro-Palestinian MPs from entering the country, and there have been threats of counter-measures from US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee. We urge the Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister to recognise the Israeli state’s determination to pursue its expansionist goals and urgently start preparing plans for more forceful action against it.
We echo UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s opinion that a settlement trade ban has to be part of “a true paradigm shift to Israel-Palestine that ultimately seeks to implement the international court of justice advisory opinion in 2024”. This stated that Israel’s presence in the occupied territories was ‘unlawful in its entirety’. The opinion rules, she says, that, “all states carry an obligation…not to recognise the situation as legal, and not render aid and assistance in maintaining it”.
Statement is online at https://jewishvoiceforliberation.org.uk/statement/on-the-uks-sanctions-on-settlement-goods-and-more/
