The Government’s ban on trade with Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank has been met with fury from Israel’s government.
On Tuesday, the Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband doubled down on the Government’s position by accusing “settler terrorists” of committing “ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank”.
In response, Israel announced the closure of the UK consulate in Jerusalem and banned 12 MPs and activists from entering the country.
Has Britain done enough to help Palestinians? Our writers , former deputy chief of staff to Rishi Sunak, , former political editor and foreign correspondent for , and , a barrister and international law specialist, give their perspectives.
Donald Macintyre: More sanctions may be needed
Before asking whether Britain should be doing more, it’s worth considering whether it could. To which the answer is yes. To take a single example, an open letter last month from 100 senior British and French diplomats to Andy Burnham and Emmanuel Macron proposed, among other things, suspending Britain’s partnership agreement with Israel, which provides for tariff-free trade between the two countries, on the grounds its human rights provisions are being violated.
There is also a panoply of possible boycotts – including sporting and cultural – on Israel itself, of the sort which helped to end South African apartheid.
Ed Miliband however has been careful, and rightly so, at least at this stage, to differentiate between Israel and its settlements in occupied territory, targeting only the latter. Which is still doing something big. Hitherto British sanctions have only been on individuals and entities associated with settler violence. He has now crossed an important line by aiming sanctions at the settlement project itself, and these are technically and legally complicated enough for now.
More sanctions may be needed if Israel’s government continues on the present road. Incidentally, one move could be to expel the Israeli Football Association from Uefa, unless it ejects the settlement teams in its own football league. That would need to involve many other countries.
Rupert Yorke: This is a largely unworkable symbolic stunt
The Government’s sanctions on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank will help stem the bleed of Labour votes to the Green Party of England and Wales in certain parts. It represents a largely unworkable symbolic stunt ahead of Andy Burnham’s first party conference as Prime Minister. This decision illuminates a growing trend in British foreign policy in recent years when conflicts abroad play out on our streets in the form of protests and increasingly polarised positions from political communities.
Fundamentally, the decline of our hard power in the form of a fully functional and modernised Armed Forces lies behind this shift. As the UK’s fiscal position has worsened in the aftermath of Brexit and the pandemic, the Treasury has been less able to identify the investment required to fund our military – a trade-off which ultimately led to Keir Starmer’s defenestration this summer. This has simply meant the UK is less able to project influence and power overseas like it once did, leaving us at the mercy of events beyond our control.
Burnham has pledged a 10-year plan for Britain, which would presumably include a coherent foreign and defence policy. Sanctions on Israeli settlements, on the other hand, ultimately constitute a short-term political fix which his backbenchers may cheer this week but forget by Monday. If he really wants to restore Britain’s status on the world stage, he should set out a credible path to increase defence spending as soon as possible, rather than prevaricating until a spending review next year. Only then will a long-term strategy that avoids the seductive temptation of easy political wins be possible.
Rupert Yorke was the deputy chief of staff to Rishi Sunak in 10 Downing Street and HM Treasury
Natasha Hausdorff: An abuse and inversion of international law
This move by the British Government is all about the Labour Party, not the welfare of Arab Palestinians. They are pandering to their anti-Israel constituency, which has in turn been fuelled by years of misinformation over the Middle East in much of the media.
Labour’s proposed trade ban against Israeli settlements is being presented as the enforcement of international law. It is the opposite.
Ed Miliband declared this week that “settlements are illegal”. This is false. A position the Government has adopted by treating a 1949 armistice line as Israel’s border. It never was. The armistice agreements expressly established military ceasefire lines, not international boundaries.
The relevant legal history begins with Israel’s creation in 1948. Under the principle of , newly independent states take on the administrative lines of the territory from which they emerged. On that basis, Israel initially inherited the boundaries of the former British Mandate. The UN partition plan in 1947, which had proposed further dividing the territory, was only a recommendation. It was rejected by the Arab side and never implemented.
This Government’s proposal to impose these extreme measures on the basis of an abuse and inversion of international law also has legal consequences back home.
The discriminatory measures set out by the Foreign Secretary would conflict with the UK-Israel Trade and Partnership Agreement, which prohibits quantitative restrictions on imports and exports, and other international trade obligations. British companies complying with such a ban could also face exposure under US federal and state counter-boycott legislation, with consequences for American investment and operations in Britain.
This is not simply bad Middle East policy. In the name playing politics and placating the anti-Israel (and let’s face it, anti-Jewish) brigade, Britain risks violating its own real and binding legal obligations.
Natasha Hausdorff is a barrister and international law specialist and legal director of UK Lawyers for Israel Charitable Trust