New Delhi: After Britain announced sanctions on illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank Tuesday, Israel’s foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar said Britain’s consulate in East Jerusalem would be shut down, and that Britain would be excluded from a US-led coordination mission for Gaza. “Measures against Israel will not go unanswered,” he said at a press conference.
Britain is the third country after France and Canada to announce sanctions against Israeli settlements amid growing diplomatic tensions between Israel and some of its longstanding allies. In a joint statement, the three countries said the action “marks a further turning point in our approach to protecting the two-state solution”.
The British sanctions prohibit goods produced in Israeli settlements, and will target companies and individuals providing services that support the expansion of settlements.
British Foreign secretary Ed Miliband also accused Israel’s government of turning a blind eye to “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians by Israeli settlers and called the measures the “beginning of a new approach” to the Israeli-Gaza conflict, one that “not only calls out injustice and suffering but acts”.
He said the British government’s official position was that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank was unlawful because of the “entrenchment of its control, its intention to extend permanent sovereignty, and its expansionist agenda via illegal settlements”.
That position, he said, was consistent with a 2024 advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice and should be reflected in Britain’s “economic relationship” with the occupied West Bank.
As a result, Britain, he said, would introduce “a new comprehensive sanctions regime” over the next six to nine months. “The sanctions regime will target illegal settlements and settlement expansion, not Israel,” Miliband said.
Later, even Prime Minister Andy Burnham said the targeted measures were “aimed not at the Israeli people, but in support of the two-state solution”.
Also Read: Susan Sarandon says she’s still losing Hollywood roles over support for Palestine
‘Outrageous lies’
Israel’s foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar responded by accusing Miliband of spreading an “outrageous lie” while announcing a series of countermeasures, including the closure of Britain’s consulate in East Jerusalem.
“We know that we have many friends in Britain,” Sa’ar said at a news conference. “Unfortunately, we have a hostile Labour government that is consistently operating against the State of Israel, and it has left us no choice but to respond to its hostile actions.”
He also said that 11 British lawmakers, including Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott, as well as all five sitting Green Party lawmakers, would be barred from entering Israel accusing them of “anti-Semitic and anti-Israel activity”.
“The British move is morally distorted and constitutes blatant interference in the affairs of a sovereign state and in its electoral process,” Sa’ar said.
He then added: “The attempt by the British Labour government to impose measures in the style of the ‘White Paper’ carries echoes of the antisemitic words of British Lieutenant-General Barker, commander of British forces in the Land of Israel during the Mandate, who said: ‘punish the Jews by striking at their pockets’.”
According to the foreign minister, “The move by the Labour government in Britain is particularly absurd given that, more than a century ago, it was the Balfour Declaration of the British Government that formally recognised the historic right of the Jewish people to re-establish their national home in the Land of Israel, including in Judea and Samaria.”
“This declaration served as the foundation for the British Mandate, was recognised by the League of Nations, and was subsequently incorporated into Article 80 of the United Nations Charter,” he said.
The E1 development issue
The British announcement came after Israel opened tenders for the construction of roughly 1,200 settlement homes in the so-called E1 area, a strategically important stretch of land east of Jerusalem. The plans have drawn widespread international condemnation. Israel had held off on construction in the area for decades amid international pressure.
Miliband told Parliament that the British government’s “new approach” was necessary because development in E1 would make a two-state solution “unviable” by “cutting through the heart of Palestine”.
Israel disputes that assessment. Sa’ar however, in his press conference, claimed that no new decisions have been made regarding development in E1 and that the decision was taken more than a year ago, and the tender process has been underway for many months.”
He said the Israeli government had already stipulated that two roads would be constructed. One, Road 80, would provide a major transportation route between the Bethlehem and Ramallah areas. The other, known as the “Fabric of Life” Road, would run between a-Za’im and al-Ezariya.
“The claims regarding the severing of potential Palestinian territorial contiguity are also baseless,” Sa’ar said. “The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an age-old conflict. This conflict will not be resolved through declarations from London or Paris, and a one-sided, anti-Israel approach only pushes the possibility of reaching a solution further away rather than bringing it closer.”
(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)