The United Kingdom, joined by Canada and France, announced this week that they are taking action against Israeli settlements in the West Bank. It’s an announcement that is at once groundbreaking and insufficient.
Specifically, the UK said it would suspend export licenses for weapons materially supporting Israel’s illegal occupation; ban imports of Israeli settlement goods, and; sanction private companies providing services–including financial services–that enable settlement expansion.
Those are, without a doubt, positive steps. They break with the long-standing western practice of empty condemnations of settlement activity without establishing any consequences if Israel continues that activity.
The fact that the sanctions the UK announced could include firms that provide services that support the expansion of settlements is also a meaningful and groundbreaking step. It widens the scope of actions that can be taken to prevent settlement expansion to areas that are much easier to influence than Israeli settlers themselves, especially in the field of finance.
In explaining these sanctions to the House of Commons, UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband bolstered accusations of war crimes against Israel and even described its actions on the West Bank as “ethnic cleansing.”
That is perhaps the most important development here. A major ally of Israel, one which is often said to have its own “special relationship” with the United States, is supporting the decision of the International Court of Justice that declared Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza illegal.
That could profoundly change the international discourse regarding the politics around not just settlements but the occupation as a whole.
These are unquestionably good things, and represent real progress, coming from a sector that has been so complicit with Israeli crimes and so hypocritical in ignoring the yawning gap between British rhetoric on the issue and its actions.
But the enthusiasm in some quarters over this announcement is overblown. There is a need to pump the brakes and prepare for a much greater push that can capitalize on this promising first step, address its shortcomings, and create something impactful.
What’s missing in the UK statement
Obviously, we cannot expect the United Kingdom to go from a regressive, genocide-enabling policy to one that promotes real justice and hope in one day. Since that is too much to ask, we need to be clear-eyed about what is still needed, not to chastise Miliband or his new boss, Prime Minister Andy Burnham, but to encourage and push them to go much further.
The exclusive targeting of settlements means that expansion will be more costly for Israel and that settlement enterprises themselves would face barriers to their income.
That’s great, but it is also already international law and, ostensibly, the policy of both the UK and the European Union. The problem is not the rules, it’s their enforcement.
The sanctions on settlements will not go into effect for six to nine months, and we can be sure that legal and political challenges will be mounted by Israel and its British supporters to maximize the delay.
During that time, the momentum and political urgency driven by this announcement could fade. If it becomes less politically convenient to enforce the sanctions, it would be very much in keeping with long-standing British and European practice to ignore them.
Then there is the matter of the efficacy of sanctioning only the settlements, not the state.
Back in June, the Global Echo Litigation Center released an illuminating report detailing the many ways settlement products evade regulations on labeling their point of origin accurately, making it more difficult to police their sale. It’s a system that is easily gamed.
As I reported at the time, “For years, it’s been widely known that Israel exports products, chiefly agricultural, from its settlements on the West Bank and the Golan Heights under a ‘Made in Israel’ label. It does so even though it is legally required by the European Union and the United Kingdom to label such products as being from settlements.”
Given the volume of world events and the speed of the news cycle these days, it is easy to imagine that, in nine months or more, the burden of policing false labeling and other deceptive practices would be more than the UK would want to undertake.
It’s also important to note that the ban on weapons is somewhat selective. One of the most crucial items Israel imports from the UK, albeit indirectly, are components of the F-35 fighter jet, a plane commonly used for airstrikes in Gaza. Those components were excluded from the weapons ban.
Indeed, Miliband’s wording on weaponry in general was very vague. “We will now also refuse all license applications for arms and other exports that materially contribute to the occupation…”
Like cutting off money to the settlements, arms sales are fungible. Many arms Israel uses in military operations which are not covered by this ban are also used in the settlements. Such laws, which already exist in the UK, the EU, and the United States, have not been barriers to Israel arming itself to the teeth through western largesse. Nothing in Miliband’s statements indicates a fundamental change in that travesty is certain.
The false separation between the Israeli state and Israeli settlements
Israel has long since stopped trying to pretend that the settlement project is not fully part of state activities. The Israeli army openly escorts settlers on their pogroms. The Knesset retroactively legalizes so-called “outposts” that settlers simply put up on Palestinian land. Indeed, the military regularly confiscates Palestinian land, labeling them “closed military zones” or some other title before breaking ground on new settlements there.
Yet Miliband insists on limiting the penalties to the settlements themselves. He intends to sanction ”particularly violent settlers,” but not the Israeli leaders—up to, and including, the prime minister—who enable their activities.
His speech to the House of Commons explaining this “reset” in UK policy toward Israel was prefaced by a long-winded exposition of his love for Israel. But more concerning was his explicit refusal to target the state that is, after all, intentionally pursuing the policies that are bringing these sanctions.
“The sanctions regime will target illegal settlements and settlement expansion, not Israel,” Miliband said. “We will continue to support important and valued trade with green line Israel precisely because we support the two-state solution, including security and prosperity for Israel. For this reason, I wholeheartedly oppose the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions or BDS campaign.”
That strategy is doomed to fail. Beyond the question of enforcement of these new rules, sanctioning the settlements simply doesn’t have much impact. Settlement exports are a very small part of trade between the UK and Israel.
In 2025, according to the UK government’s reports, trade between the two countries totaled approximately $8.1 billion. While it is impossible to know exactly how much trade was done with the settlements because of the evasion practices discussed above, UK records show only about $8 million of imports from Palestine, which includes the West Bank, whatever drips out of Gaza, and the settlements.
Clearly, the trade from settlements is tiny. But the fact is that the settlements are not isolated from Israel. Many firms operating in the settlements are simply parts of larger Israeli companies. Most financing for those companies isn’t specifically sent to a “settlement” business.
Settlers themselves are not worried about this. They know they can find alternative recipients for their goods or, failing that, other ways to make a living. The unending support of the state reassures them, and they’re right to feel that way.
Limited vision
Miliband’s fear of this UK action being seen as a contribution to the BDS movement is also irrational. Whether he likes the movement or not, these are the sort of sanctions BDS activists want to see put in place, although they certainly want them broader, targeted at the state, and with more bite.
His approach to presenting these sanctions reflects another potential flaw in their implementation.
The sanctions were prompted not by a realization that years of UK policy in Palestine and Israel had dismally failed to make any progress toward ending the occupation or stabilizing the region.
No, they were prompted by Israel pushing the envelope, as it has so often done. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu knows well that construction in the E-1 corridor—which would, if completed, bisect the West Bank and shatter the last remaining illusion that a two-state solution is possible—is a red line for the Europeans, and would be so for a more rational American government as well. They also know that the escalated settler violence has prompted negative reactions around the world.
Netanyahu and his cronies are trying to see what they can get away with. Issuing tenders for construction in E-1 is something Israel has threatened to do for decades. They’ve always been forced to back off.
But they have, in the last few years, been able to get away with actions they had previously thought too provocative, such as the complete destruction of Gaza and the genocide of the people there. They have even managed to finally talk the United States into a suicidal war with Iran.
So why not see if they can finally get away with cutting the West Bank in half and putting paid, once and for all, to any Palestinian aspirations for a state?
These sanctions are Britain’s response to that. Even the United States, which routinely screams almost as loud as Israel at any hint of pressure on its Israeli ally, has been relatively quiet about this.
While the Christian Nationalist Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee threatened potential consequences, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who actually matters in this regard, sounded a more conciliatory note: “We heard their arguments as to why,” Rubio said. “But look, we share the goal of stability. We don’t want to see some uptick in violence or an uptick in conflict or tensions in the West Bank at a very tenuous time in the region. But beyond that, as of this moment, we don’t have any further comment.” Neither he nor Donald Trump have said anything more.
This indicates that they are waiting to see if Israel backs off of the construction in E-1 in response to British pressure. There’s a good chance that this will happen, and, if it does, an equally good chance that the UK will back off from its sanctions.
That’s by no means inevitable. By invoking the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and stating its support for the ICJ’s 2024 ruling, on top of recognizing the State of Palestine last year, the UK has made real progress.
But it’s not irrevocable progress, and Miliband’s own words contain both the promise that something can really change here, and the possibility that Britain will back off, especially if Israel agrees not to take any more steps in E-1 for a while and confines its killing and terrorizing of Palestinians to its security forces instead of the settlers.
Supporters of Palestinian rights—in the UK, the United States, and Europe—can all contribute a lot to pushing the Burnham government forward rather than back. One thing this recent announcement does show is that having been supported by Canada and France, if the UK does take more positive steps, they will be magnified by others.
