The British foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, has announced plans for an import ban on goods from illegal settlements in occupied Palestine and sanctions for companies that “finance or facilitate” the construction, infrastructure and marketing of illegal settlements. He also said “settler terrorists” were perpetrating ethnic cleansing in the occupied West Bank, while the government turned a blind eye and some members supported it. Britain’s argument was with the government of Israel, not its people, Miliband said.
The new measures would target only the expansion and entrenchment of Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine, not Israel inside the green line – the 1949 armistice boundary, once seen as a possible template for Israel’s border with a future Palestinian state. The measures were prompted in part by Israel’s decision to press ahead with a vast new settlement in the heart of the West Bank, in an area known as E1. The project is designed to “bury the idea of a Palestinian state”, the far-right Israeli minister Bezalel Smotrich has said, and Miliband described the issuing of construction tenders in August as a “red line”.
He told parliament of his family ties to Israel, including joyful childhood memories of visiting his grandmother, who found a home there after Nazis murdered her husband and 60 other relatives. By acting against ethnic cleansing and settlement expansion, Britain was standing up for its core values, including “rule of law, freedom and self-determination”, and the future of both Israelis and Palestinians, he said, adding that the new measures were designed to “salvage the only course for peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians, the two-state solution”.
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