Israel ordered the closure of the British consulate in East Jerusalem after the United Kingdom led a coordinated effort by 12 governments to restrict trade with Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced the import ban on all goods from Israeli settlements in the West Bank on Tuesday. Eighty attacks carried out by Israeli settlers resulted in casualties or property damage between Aug. 11 and Aug. 24, according to the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights.
More than 1,040 Palestinians have been injured in such incidents across 2026, it reports, and 79 Palestinians, including 19 children, have been killed by either Israeli military personnel or settlers so far this year. That adds to the escalating violence against Palestinians in the West Bank since the terror attacks led by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed around 1,200 people and took more than 200 hostage. Since then, another 1,100 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank.
Miliband said that the Israeli government had too often “turned a blind eye.” Following the U.K.’s lead, Canada and France announced similar trade bans Tuesday. Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden also joined those three countries in backing national or European restrictions, although their individual commitments vary. In a joint statement, the 12 governments said Israel’s actions were undermining the prospect of a two-state solution.
The statement calls for a halt on settlement expansions and accountability for settler violence. The planned sanctions will ban the import of any goods from Israeli settlements in the West Bank, but will not impact any goods from Israel. Annual trade between the U.K. and Israel totaled around £6 billion ($8.1 billion) in the four quarters leading to Q2 2025, with goods imported by the U.K. from Israel valued at £1.2 billion ($1.6 billion).
It is unclear how much of this trade originates from Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, says that the settler economy produces mainly produce. You also see a lot of export of herbs, so this is in part the basis of the economy,” he says.
A report published by Global Echo in June found that over 17% of the agricultural shipments to Europe that it analyzed contained settlement products. Doyle also says some settlements have been expanding industrial zones which “contribute to the production of many different types of Israeli exports.” And while the sanctions will not target goods from Israel, Doyle says that some products originating from settlements are instead labeled as originating from Israel. European policy has previously sought clarity on the exact origin of Israeli products and whether goods have come from West Bank settlements.
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