LONDON (The Thursday Times) — British Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced Tuesday that his government is imposing a package of sanctions targeting Israeli settlements in the West Bank, framing the move as a decisive break from years of British hesitancy on the issue. “For too long, we have been hesitant to act, fearful of being accused of being anti-Israel,” Burnham wrote in a statement posted to X. “Today we are announcing carefully judged, targeted steps that are not aimed at the Israeli people, but at the unacceptable policies of the current Israeli government.”
Burnham said the scale of destruction in Gaza was “hard to comprehend,” citing more than 70,000 people killed, at least 20,000 of them children, with millions displaced and the population of Gaza “penned into just one third of the territory.” He said the situation had weighed on him even before taking office. “Before I became Prime Minister, I said our country’s response had been too slow and simply not good enough,” he wrote. “That’s why I committed to changing the government’s approach.”
On the pace of settlement expansion, Burnham said the current Israeli government has approved 104 new settlements since taking office in December 2022, and that the United Nations has recorded more than 1,500 incidents of settler violence so far this year aimed at driving Palestinians from their land. He singled out Israel’s planned E1 settlement, saying tenders for its construction were being allowed to proceed ahead of Israel’s October elections. “This would cut a swathe through the heart of the West Bank, snuffing out the hope of realising a two-state solution,” he said. “It cannot be allowed to happen.”
He set out three measures his government would take: a ban on trade in goods from illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories; a formal change in Britain’s legal position to hold, for the first time, that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory is unlawful in its entirety, a position he said Britain reached “independent of, but in line with,” the International Court of Justice’s own conclusion; and sanctions against individuals and companies that “support, facilitate or profit from illegal settlements,” including any business or investor involved in constructing the E1 settlement specifically. He also announced a new package of humanitarian aid for Gaza.
Burnham was careful to distinguish the measures from broader sanctions on Israel itself. “We are not imposing sanctions on Israel as a whole, which would punish the Israeli people, many of whom disagree with their government’s position,” he wrote, adding that he continues to condemn the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel “in the strongest possible terms” and continues to condemn Hamas, but that this “does not justify the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza or the West Bank.”
He also moved directly to head off accusations that the policy reflected hostility toward Jewish people. “The Israeli people are not responsible for the actions of their government. And nor is the Jewish community in the UK,” he wrote. “Blaming British Jews for the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is wrong, plain and simple. And it is antisemitism, plain and simple.” He said he had met representatives of the UK’s Jewish community the week before the announcement and that his government “will stop at nothing” to ensure their safety and to counter antisemitism.
Burnham closed by tying the announcement to Britain’s broader standing in the world. “In a difficult and dangerous world, a decade on from Brexit, there is a risk that Britain loses the confidence to lead and stand up for its values,” he wrote. “I’m not prepared to let that happen.” The measures, he said, were ultimately about preserving “the only solution that could see the Israeli and Palestinian people living side by side in peace and security.”
