Israel to retaliate by closing the British Consulate in Jerusalem.
By Tovah Lazaroff
(JTA) — The United Kingdom, France and Canada will ban goods produced in West Bank settlements and Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told Parliament on Tuesday, explaining that all such communities were deemed by his country to be illegal.
The declaration exacerbated rising tensions in the traditionally strong Israel-U.K. alliance. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar warned that the steps stoked antisemitism against British Jews in an on-camera statement to reporters in Jerusalem.
Sa’ar charged that the measures were a politicized, hostile action deliberately taken ahead of Friday’s Jewish New Year holiday, with an eye toward influencing the country’s Oct. 27 elections.
Israel, he said, is responding by closing the British Consulate in Jerusalem that services Palestinians. It will also remove British representatives from the International Gaza Support Center in Kiryat Gat and halt British training of Palestinian Authority security forces. He added that Israel would bar the entry of 12 British politicians and other nationals involved in anti-Israel activity.
France and Canada have also announced a ban on the import of settlement goods, Miliband told Parliament. He noted that the Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium, Spain and Norway have either banned goods or are in the process of doing so.
In the same address, Miliband affirmed Israel’s right to exist, reflected on his own Jewish roots and rejected the notion that there was a connection between the policy steps against West Bank settlement activity and the safety of British Jews as he spoke out against the rising “scourge” of antisemitism in the U.K.
What is motivating the U.K., Miliband said, is “a deep sense of shame about what has unfolded in Palestine under the eyes of the international community” as well as Israel’s “clear intent to bury the Palestinian state.”
A two-state resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said, “is the north star of this Government’s policy and, indeed, of successive British Governments over decades.”
Miliband leveled harsh charges against Israel, saying that its army’s actions in Gaza during the last three years of war could amount to war crimes and that Britain supported the International Court of Justice examination of whether the term genocide was applicable.
With respect to the West Bank, Miliband said the government agrees “that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank, perpetrated by settler terrorists.”
He repeated the same charges in a short video he posted on X in which he said “the situation in Palestine is a moral emergency.”
To combat Israeli actions, he told Parliament, Britain “will introduce an import ban on goods from illegal settlements in the occupied [Palestinian] territory” as part of a “new comprehensive sanctions regime” that will be put in place within nine months.
This will include, he said, “action against specific companies and individuals who provide services, such as construction, infrastructure, financing or real estate for settlement expansion.”
To those who “finance or facilitate illegal settlements, let me say this, you will face the full force of U.K. sanctions,” Miliband warned.
Miliband clarified that the ban would not affect the export of religious items or life-saving Israeli medications. He explained that trade with the settlements was minimal and that the greater impact would be the sanctions on services.
As part of declaring the ban, Miliband said the British government is also adopting the International Court of Justice’s 2024 advisory opinion that all Israeli settlement activity beyond the pre-1967 border was illegal.
But others in Parliament pushed back against Miliband’s declaration. MP Richard Tice of the U.K.’s right-wing Reform Party said the sanctions were a grave mistake that would “embolden the scourge of antisemitism against British Jews on British streets,” endanger ties with the United States and lead to “tit-for-tat” sanctions from Israel.
Miliband shot back that “no British Jew is responsible for the policies of the Israeli government and it behooves all of us to make sure that there can be no confusion about that,” saying that Tice’s statement “fell foul” of that goal.
At the start of the debate, Miliband addressed the complexity for Jews like himself who both supported Israel and opposed the actions of its government.
Miliband said he was delivering his statement on the United Kingdom’s censure of Israel as a “proud British Jew.” The grandson of Holocaust survivors, Miliband told Parliament that his grandmother had lost 60 relatives in the Holocaust, including her husband, and that he was grateful Israel had given her a home after World War II.
“I remember visiting her in the 1970s in Tel Aviv and seeing the life and sanctuary Israel had provided. Indeed, some of my most joyful childhood memories are of picking oranges as a kid on the kibbutz where my cousins lived,” he said.
But a number of parliamentarians, such as Tice, were not swayed by Miliband’s words. The message to British Jews, MP Oliver Dowden of the Conservative Party said, is that the “government no longer regards Israel as a friend, and that heaps pressure on an already beleaguered Jewish population.”
Conservative MP Bob Blackman said the trade ban was a victory for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which will now push for a full boycott against Israel. The U.K.’s actions also run the risk of becoming a full boycott, he said, given how difficult it is to “differentiate between products and services on either side of the Green Line.”
Many other parliamentarians applauded the move. Labour MP Emily Thornberry said the government had “finally done the right thing” and “we are all smiling today.”
Labour MP Debbie Abrahams said the trade ban “elevated the status” of Parliament, the government and the country “by ensuring that everybody—all states and all individuals—are seen as equal before the law and in terms of human rights.”
The U.K. action is the latest escalation in tensions between Israel and the Labour-led British government headed by Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who took power in July.
The prior government, led by former Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer, had already angered Israel by recognizing Palestinian statehood in 2025, suspending licenses for the export of arms to Israel and freezing talks toward a free-trade agreement.
In concert with Miliband’s appearance at Parliament, the U.K. and 11 other countries issued a joint statement pledging “their intention to introduce national and/or support European restrictions on trade in goods with settlements which are illegal under international law.”
Those other countries were Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden.
The 12-country bloc said it was taking this step to maintain the viability of a two-state resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, describing the situation in the West Bank as “rapidly deteriorating.”
In its statement, the bloc stressed that it was taking this step amid an “unprecedented level of settler violence and settlement expansion, including the unacceptable decision to publish tenders for the E1 settlement project.” That project is seen as cutting through land in a way that would render a Palestinian state unviable.
The U.K., Canada and France issued a separate statement announcing the ban on settlement exports and the introduction of “targeted measures against settlements and those who facilitate them or profit from them.”
The Trump administration has held a different view than much of the international community when it comes to the status of West Bank settlements. It has recognized Israel’s historic and religious claims to portions of the West Bank. Some of its officials have adopted the biblical reference of Judea and Samaria, also used by right-wing Israelis, to refer to that territory. During President Donald Trump’s first term, the U.S. declared that West Bank settlement activity was not “per se inconsistent with international law.”
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who is among those who believe in Israel’s right to build in “Judea and Samaria,” told Reuters in a video interview that the ban would have a negative impact. He explained that the measure would prevent the U.K. and other countries from doing business in states with strong anti-boycott legislation in place, such as Florida.
This means there will be a “huge economic impact on British businesses,” Huckabee said.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio was more cautious, telling reporters the U.K. had informed the U.S. in advance that it planned to take this step. “We are not going to do what the U.K. did,” Rubio said, but he cautioned that at the same time the U.S. was opposed to measures that destabilized the West Bank, which makes it difficult to progress in Gaza.
