FOREIGN Secretary Ed Miliband told the Commons yesterday that Israeli ‘settler terrorists’ are carrying out ethnic cleansing in the West Bank with the tacit backing of the Israeli government.
He announced that Britain now regards the occupation as unlawful in its entirety and, alongside 11 other countries, will ban trade with the illegal settlements.
‘The British government agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank, perpetrated by settler terrorists,’ Miliband said.
‘All too often the Israeli government has turned a blind eye to this and worse; members of it have made statements and taken actions to support the forced displacement of Palestinians.
‘I recognise the gravity of saying this, but the truth is the least the people who face such suffering deserve. And it should be the prelude to justice.’
The measures comprise an import ban on settlement goods, a sanctions regime against providing construction, financing or other services to settlements, a ban on advertising settlement properties in the UK, personal sanctions on individuals promoting settler violence, and a refusal of all arms and export licences that ‘materially contribute to the occupation’.
Miliband said the export ban would remain ‘as long as the occupation persists’ and that legislation would be in place within nine months. Those financing or facilitating settlements would ‘face the full force of UK sanctions’.
Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden announced parallel sanctions. Prime Minister Andy Burnham briefed Donald Trump and Gulf governments including Qatar on Monday.
Miliband said more settlements had been approved in the last four years than in the previous 20 combined, and that Israel’s E1 project east of Jerusalem threatens to sever the north of the West Bank from the south.
He spoke of a ‘deep sense of shame about what has unfolded in Palestine under the eyes of the international community’ and of ‘the most unimaginable trauma and suffering in the last three years, death, destruction and dehumanisation on an appalling scale’.
Britain would use next week’s United Nations General Assembly to ‘shine the clearest and harshest spotlight on what is happening and what must change.’
He refused, however, to call Israel’s actions in Gaza genocide, saying the government would await the International Court of Justice and would not pre-judge it.
