The British government has today announced a new set of sanctions against six companies and individuals involved in financing, enabling and carrying out settler violence in the illegally occupied West Bank. Whilst any move towards additional sanctions is correct, these are tiny and piecemeal steps which will not prevent Israel from continuing to act with impunity in its genocide and crimes against the Palestinian people. In addition to these limited sanctions, the government has announced that it will ‘firmly advise’ British businesses against illegal activity, sending the disgraceful message that acting according to international law is optional.
These measures are utterly inadequate, and do not come close to meeting the government’s legal obligations to end all involvement with Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise. The Foreign Secretary abjectly failed to answer repeated questions from MPs as to why, despite the much-heralded noise around the new announcement, they have once again failed to actually ban trade with illegal settlements, a minimal demand among a range of sanctions which the government should be imposing without delay.
Israel’s colonial settlement expansion is one of the primary ways through which it forcibly displaces Palestinians from their lands and attempts to prevent their return. Settlement expansion is inextricably linked with the horrific violence we have seen over the past years. Settler attacks take the form of armed violence against Palestinians: attacks on farmers, on families, arson on homes and places of worship and increasingly sexual violence – all of which is supported by the Israeli military. This is a part of the policy, together with Israel’s ‘legalisation’ of land grabs, that makes Palestinians’ lives unliveable in their homeland. It is not ‘a few bad apples’ in the Israeli government or business community, it is a central feature of Israel’s apartheid regime.
Hundreds, if not thousands of British companies and individuals are involved in this violence and displacement, far more than the small handful of companies sanctioned today. Copious research has been conducted over years to identify these companies and compel them to end their involvement, and yet successive British governments have invested more energy into restricting campaigners than it has in meeting its obligations.
The government has only taken even these limited steps because of the growing pressure of public opinion and grassroots campaigning demanding concrete action to end its complicity in Israel’s genocide and apartheid. In the past few days alone, over 21,000 PSC members and supporters have emailed the Home Secretary calling for her to urgently ban an ‘Israeli Real Estate’ event scheduled to take place in London, which is promoting the opportunity to buy land in the illegal settlement bloc of Gush Etzion, and to investigate those involved in organising it. The fact that the government has still not done so demonstrates the shallowness and dishonesty of today’s announcement.
Inspired by the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions, millions of people across Britain are active in campaigns to press shops not to stock produce from Israeli settlements, to stop banking with Barclays or other banks implicated in the arms trade with Israel, to take action for Palestine in their universities or workplaces and to push for divestment in their local councils. This work will continue until the government finally takes meaningful action to end its complicity with Israel’s crimes.