On 8 September, as part of a joint initiative involving twelve countries, the UK foreign secretary made a statement to the House of Commons announcing new sanctions targeting Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Most notably, Ed Miliband condemned the ‘ethnic cleansing’ taking place there. The measures he detailed will target ‘specific companies and individuals who provide services such as construction, infrastructure, financing, or real estate for settlement expansion’.

This move is driven partly by domestic politics. Andy Burnham’s new government appears finally to be acknowledging the impasse the Labour Party created for itself by failing to listen to the public feeling and wave of protest sparked by the worsening attack on the Palestinian people. As early as 11 November 2023, more than 800,000 people marched through London in solidarity with Gaza. In recent months, the Green Party – which has taken a much more assertive stance on the issue than Labour – has been gaining ground in opinion polls, by-elections and local elections.

These new sanctions against illegal settlements have come late. Since 7 October 2023, Israeli forces and settlers have killed more than 1,100 Palestinians – including over 240 children – in the West Bank. The Israeli army also subjects the population to arbitrary detention and imprisonment, various forms of humiliation, and an endless series of checkpoints that have turned travelling across the territory into a nightmare.

Ultimately, the measures announced by Miliband are woefully inadequate. On the one hand, the state targeted by these sanctions – solely because of the colonisation of the West Bank – is committing genocide and war crimes, and unlawfully targeting Lebanon, Syria and Iran. On the other, imports from settlements account for only a tiny fraction of the £6bn in trade between the United Kingdom and Israel. According to Bloomberg (8 September 2026), British diplomats assured Washington that the sanctions were ‘largely symbolic and will have no material impact on the UK’s wider relationship with Israel’.