Andy Burnham’s Government is today set to announce a ban on trade with Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank – perhaps its most significant foreign-policy intervention since taking office. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband will present the move as an attempt to protect the prospect of a two-state solution, but it has already provoked threats of retaliation from Israel and drawn criticism from US politicians.
Supporters argue that Britain should not trade with settlements widely considered illegal under international law. Critics say the ban will do little for Palestinians, while damaging Britain’s relations internationally. Others see domestic politics at work, as Labour attempts to win back voters drifting towards the Greens.
So is the ban a principled attempt to restrain Israel – or an ineffective gesture driven by Labour’s electoral fears?
Our writers, Patrick Cockburn, The iPaper’s special correspondent, broadcaster Jonathan Sacerdoti, Paul Wood, former BBC foreign correspondent, and Kitty Donaldson, The iPaper’s chief political commentator, offer their perspectives.
Patrick Cockburn: The West Bank’s suffering makes sanctions a moral necessity
The cruelty, violence and dispossession suffered by the three million Palestinians on the occupied West Bank is indisputable. “The Israeli Government and the settlers share the same goal of maximum land and minimum Palestinians, with the authorities not only failing to stop settler violence, but actively enabling it,” says Sarah Sanbar, an Israel and Palestine researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Settlers shoot, attack, and expel Palestinians from their land, and the state provides the weapons, the legal cover, and the budget to do it.” Over 1,000 Palestinians from the West Bank have been killed, almost a quarter of them children, in the last three years, according to the UN.
The terrible fate of the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank is the great moral issue of our age. It should be impossible for any decent individual or government to know about the 75,000 Palestinians – 38,000 of them women and girls according to the UN – killed in Gaza and say “there was right on both sides”. On the contrary, this is an issue about right and wrong and the British Government is wholly correct, if late in the day, to “reset” Britain’s relations with Israel by imposing sanctions on trade with illegal Israeli settlements on the occupied West Bank.
Critics of the UK Government’s moves produce a number of arguments that are easily disposed of. They say the move is an empty gesture that will have no impact, but hysterical denunciations of it in Israel and Britain show that supporters of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s radical right-wing government care a great deal about the British action. Recall also that it was a right-wing nationalist Israeli politician who called Netanyahu’s coalition “a government of darkness” when it was first established in 2022.
Another spurious argument is that the UK initiative will encourage antisemitism in Britain, but this is to accept Netanyahu’s claim that hostility to his extremist policies towards the Palestinians is the same as hostility towards Jews in general. Nobody should accept this disgraceful falsehood.
Patrick Cockburn is The iPaper’s special correspondent
Jonathan Sacerdoti: This is a cynical move which won’t help Palestinians
To understand the Government’s proposed sanctions on Israel, work backwards from their likely consequences. Any claim that this is principally an act of conscience becomes difficult to sustain once those consequences are considered.
The measures will do nothing tangible for Palestinians, nothing to advance peace and nothing to improve Israel’s security. For Britain, meanwhile, they risk damaging relations with Israel and the United States, while broadcasting a broader message of weakness: sufficient domestic political pressure can dictate British foreign policy.
The timing offers a more convincing explanation. Labour faces a by-election in Sir Keir Starmer’s former seat, with the increasingly hard-left Greens threatening its vote, followed by Labour conference. The Government is reportedly rushing to act before the Jewish High Holy Days – which will also bring the anniversary of the murder of two Jews at prayer in Manchester on Yom Kippur last year, amid an extraordinary period of anti-Jewish extremism in Britain.
Yet even as electoral appeasement, the policy is self-defeating. Voters attracted to the most aggressively anti-Israel politics will not be satisfied by limited sanctions. Each concession merely establishes the starting point for the next demand.
If the policy cannot achieve its stated foreign-policy objectives, perhaps foreign policy is not really its purpose.
Jonathan Sacerdoti is a broadcaster and journalist
Paul Wood: Netanyahu’s Government has gotten exactly what they want
The “comprehensive reset” of relations with Israel – starting with a ban on trade with the settlements – risks serious damage to Britain’s relations with the United States.
The American ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, was already involved in a public row with Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband before the announcement was made. On Saturday, Miliband had said he was told Israel is blocking medicines from entering Gaza. Huckabee posted on X that “the Brits have lost it. The Jew hate of their government knows no boundaries and knows no facts”.
He stuck to that line on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, despite being reminded that Miliband is the son of Jewish refugees from the Nazis. “You go by what people do,” he said, “not just by what they say or who they’re related to.” He raised the possibility of “sanctions, repercussions, or retaliations from the US” if Britain went ahead with the trade ban.
No doubt trying to get ahead of this, Andy Burnham spoke to Donald Trump by phone on Monday. Burnham reportedly “stressed the importance of the two-state solution” to ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In refusing goods from the settlements, Britain is following Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium. France wants action too, but only at EU level, which means not yet. Most EU member states support a full ban on settlement goods (worth about €300m (£258m) a year, against €43bn (£37m) in trade with Israel as a whole). But Germany, Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic oppose it.
The Arab capitals have yet to react to the British ban. But in August, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Egypt and Jordan signed a joint statement with Turkey, Pakistan and Indonesia condemning Israel’s continued illegal settlement policies.
If the Burnham government hopes to change Israel’s behaviour, there may be the opposite effect to the one intended. The far-right members of Netanyahu’s government have spent the campaign looking for a fight with a foreign government – they believe they can only benefit from the ensuing controversy. Britain has now given them what they want.
Paul Wood is a former BBC foreign correspondent
Kitty Donaldson: The real target of these sanctions is the Green Party
Burnham’s decision is as much about Labour’s internal politics and seeing off the threat from the Greens as it is about condemning settler violence.
While high-stakes internationally – the US has reacted furiously and threatened retaliation – it’s low stakes internally. More than 140 Labour MPs have signed a letter calling for a ban on trade with Israeli settlements as they are widely deemed illegal under international law.
Burnham is seeking to distinguish himself from Starmer’s handling of Gaza and attempting to win back voters who have drifted to the Green Party. The Greens are currently a serious threat to Labour, including in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election next month, prompted by Starmer stepping down.
In the May 2026 Camden council elections, across the seat’s wards, Labour took 38.8 per cent to the Greens’ 28.8 per cent. Crucially, however, the Greens took all three council seats off Labour in the Holborn and Covent Garden ward, plus a gain in Bloomsbury and two councillors already in Regent’s Park, all within the constituency.
Whether Burnham’s sanctions go far enough for Green voters is another question.
Burnham, secure in position, is unlikely to face much angst at Labour’s annual conference in a few weeks, but the budget later this autumn will be much trickier. Against a woeful economic backdrop and likely tax rises, banking party-pleasing policy decisions now is part of a strategy to build internal Labour support for difficult decisions ahead.
Kitty Donaldson is The iPaper’s chief political commentator
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