Citing the UN definition of \u201ca purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas\u201d, Miliband said that the Israeli government has turned a blind eye to such activity.<\/p>\n
British government policy up until now has declared settlements to be illegal, but today the government accepted the 2024 view of the International Court of Justice that Israeli occupation as a whole was unlawful.<\/p>\n
To emphasise what he said was the government\u2019s view of the \u201cunlawfulness\u201d of it, an import ban on goods from settlements was introduced, \u201cwith appropriate religious exemptions\u201d, with Miliband saying the new measures amounted to a \u201ccomprehensive sanctions regime\u201d.<\/p>\n
He also said that there would be consequences for those advertising settlements, and made reference to a recent Israeli property expo which he called \u201cshameful\u201d.<\/p>\n
The government also introduced sanctions against extremist settlers in the West Bank including far-right activists Baruch Marzel and Benzi Gopstein.<\/p>\n
Many pro-Palestine campaigners have demanded that Britain withdraw from the F-35 fighter jet programme because of its use by Israel. The government didn\u2019t go that far, but did re-emphasise its partial arms embargo on Israel, introduced in September 2024, and said it would go further and introduce a \u201cdouble lock\u201d on arms controls and \u201crefuse all licence applications for arms and other exports that materially contribute to the occupation\u201d.<\/p>\n
Amid the criticism of Israel, there was also a call on the Palestinian authority to \u201caccelerate reform\u201d.<\/p>\n
As regards Gaza, Miliband again went further than any of his predecessors in condemning Israel\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n
He said that Hamas\u2019 atrocities on October 7 \u201ccannot justify what has happened in Gaza\u201d.<\/p>\n
As well as announcing that Britain would be welcoming in more students from Gaza, he claimed Israeli government decisions had presiding over a \u201ctotally avoidable humanitarian catastrophe\u201d and that \u201chumanitarian aid and access has been routinely blocked\u201d \u2013 something disputed by Israel and the US.<\/p>\n
While stopping short of endorsing claims of Israeli war crimes, he repeated claims from UN reports that \u201cwar crimes appear to have been committed\u201d and said that the government backed \u201clegal processes to determine this\u201d.<\/p>\n
There is some continuity from Sir Keir Starmer\u2019s government in that Miliband also said that the question of whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza was a matter for international courts.<\/p>\n
Prior to the announcement on Tuesday, some Labour figures questioned whether the anti-Israel measures were more to do with planning for the party\u2019s annual conference later this month.<\/p>\n
It was a point Israel\u2019s foreign minister Gideon Sa\u2019ar also emphasised as he accused Miliband of \u201coutrageous lies\u201d against his country.<\/p>\n
Sa\u2019ar said: \u201cThey chose to do this, on the eve of the holiest days in the Jewish calendar, for domestic political reasons, ahead of the Labour Party Conference taking place this month.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other Westminster figures have also speculated whether strong anti-Israel measures might improve the party\u2019s chances at next month\u2019s Holborn and St Pancras, where they face a battle against Zack Polanski to hold onto Sir Keir Starmer\u2019s old seat.<\/p>\n
While offering rhetorical opposition to Hamas, outlets supporting them have claimed the foreign secretary\u2019s announcement as a victory.<\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s foreign minister announced a series of measures against Israel in response to the measures, including the closure of the British consulate in East Jerusalem and the banning of 12 British MPs known to be highly critical of Israel \u2013 including Zarah Sultana, Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott and the entire Green Party parliamentary party \u2013 from entering the country.<\/p>\n
Despite the urging of far-right internal security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Israelis haven\u2019t changed policy to recognise Argentine claims over the Falkland Islands nor, so far, were there any economic measures in response.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Citing the UN definition of \u201ca purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284352,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[41582,2673,37,14924],"class_list":["post-284351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-bds","tag-ed-miliband","tag-israel","tag-settlements"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117237913238513181","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}