Milliband s Sanctions

Protesters say Milliband’s announcement is too little and too late

During Wednesday’s Prime Minister Questions at the House of Commons, protesters gathered outside to keep up their pressure on the government to end its complicity with the ongoing Genocide in Gaza and the accelerating violent settlement expansion in the West Bank. It was the day after the new Foreign Secretary Ed Milliband had announced limited sanctions, and we were keen to hear reactions from protesters.

Common to any policy announcements on Israel, the Foreign Office announcement received criticism from both sides of this polarised and propagandised issue.

Zionists piled on to social media to vilify Milliband, with predictable accusations of anti-Semitism, undermined somewhat by his Jewish heritage – he is the son of Polish immigrants and his father fled the Nazis in Belgium in 1940. His speech was also careful to stress that it was aimed solely at settlement-related economic activity and not at Israeli, Jewish, or other people on any basis of identity.

Anti-Zionists welcomed the government’s recognition that settlement expansion was completely outside international law, but noted that it has been since 1949 – under the Fourth Geneva Convention (Article 49), reinforced in 2004 by an International Court of Justice ruling, as well as numerous statements over many decades from the Security Council.

While the UK government has previously recognised the settlements as illegal, the Foreign Secretary went a little further this time, adopting the 2024 ICJ advisory that the occupation as a whole is unlawful, and stating that what is happening in the West Bank is “ethnic cleansing, perpetrated by settler terrorists”.

But Milliband’s announcement is widely regarded as too little, too late, especially given its rolling implementation, expected to take six to nine months. Without more urgency, it seems likely the Occupying Force will have achieved its current illegal aim, to further split and isolate Palestinians and ethnically cleanse huge areas, before any sanction even takes effect.

In an interview posted the day after the sanctions announcement, Milliband says “I want a strong and flourishing relationship with Israel”. Asked if he would halt the spy flights from RAF Akrotiri and the sharing of intelligence info with Israel, Milliband responded that “the UK has an important intelligence & security relationship with Israel”. In his speech he also voiced wholehearted opposition to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Calls continue for a total arms export ban, much stronger diplomatic pressure and far wider sanctions, because it is clear that the ‘settler terrorists’ are backed by Israeli government policy, IDF support and protection, and unequivocal statements of intention by senior Israeli officials.

While the measures do include immediate targeted sanctions on five more extremist settlers under the Global Human Rights sanctions regime, most of the measures will actually take at least six months and up to nine months to implement.