In a dramatic speech in the House of Commons on Tuesday, British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced a new sanction warfare campaign against Jewish communities in the West Bank, as well as other punitive measures against what he called Israel’s “unlawful occupation.”
Miliband said his government would impose an import ban on all Jewish products from the West Bank, sanction companies and individuals that facilitate the construction and expansion of West Bank Jewish communities, and refuse licenses for British exports deemed to materially support Israel’s presence in the territories.
He added that Canada and France would also impose an import ban, with many additional Western nations set to “support further action.”
Shortly after Miliband’s speech, the governments of Britain, Canada, and France issued a joint statement affirming that their nations would “take steps to ban the importation of goods from settlements and enforce targeted measures against settlements and those who facilitate them or profit from them.”
Notably absent from the list of 12 nations engaged in this British-led sanction war against Israel is the United States.
It was reported that US President Donald Trump was briefed by British Prime Minister Andy Burnham ahead of Miliband’s announcement and did not object to the plan or request a delay.
When asked about the sanctions on Tuesday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio also hinted at the Trump administration’s lack of opposition.
While noting that Washington does not intend to join London’s sanctions, Rubio was careful to avoid condemning the move.
“We were made aware that they are gonna make this decision,” he said.
“We heard their arguments as to why. We share the goal of stability. We don’t want to see an uptick in violence or tensions in the West Bank in a tenuous time in the region.”
A clear game of good cop/bad cop is afoot.
While these countermeasures seem weak in comparison to the aggressiveness of the sanctions, there are a few important points Israeli leaders should keep in mind.
First of all, we shouldn’t take British accusations that Israel is occupying parts of Palestine too seriously when Britain itself not only occupied this country for roughly three decades, but also created our conflict with the Palestinians to advance their own imperial interests at the time.
In fact, we should remind ourselves that the British only left this country because of an anti-colonial struggle led by the Sternist Leḥi (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel) underground. A major catalyst in the British Empire’s decline was being forced out of Palestine by what the final British White Paper called “Jewish terrorism.”
London still hasn’t forgiven the Jewish state for that humiliation and British policies toward Israel over the decades have shown this.
Second, these sanctions should largely be understood as diplomatic theater obviously connected to Israel’s current election cycle.
The United Kingdom and its allies clearly want to create the impression, likely in coordination with Israeli opposition figures, that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu (Likud) and his coalition partners have destroyed Jerusalem’s international standing and downgraded important relationships with Western governments.
In this regard, the timing of this move should be understood as an attempt to scare Israeli voters into supporting opposition parties.
Third, this is clearly a desperate attempt for Western nations to revive the long-dead “two-state solution” policy.
Since the 1967 Six Day War, it’s been the consistent policy of all Western governments to not only force Israel from the territories won in that war, which happen to constitute the cradle of Jewish civilization, but also to suppress the political and ideological influence of those Jews who live in these territories.
Like the Trump administration in Washington, the governments engaging in this sanction war likely view Israeli opposition figures as more likely to help the West revive the two-state paradigm than Netanyahu and his partners.
While most Israeli opposition figures have loudly reject the two-state agenda, this rejection is largely due to the public mood in Israeli society.
Most Israelis currently oppose dividing the land. The problem, however, is that this opposition to partition is largely due to security concerns and a distrust of Palestinians, rather than a genuine conscious connection to these territories or an understanding of what they mean in the Jewish story.
Therefore, the Israeli opposition figures claiming to oppose partition can’t be trusted to maintain that position if they were to form a government – especially given the aggressive pressure they’ll likely be under from Western governments still obsessed with dividing our land.
Avraham Stern – better known as Yair – was the first Jewish political figure to identify Britain as Israel’s “enemy.” He was psychologically able to do this because he had a clear understanding of Jewish national interests.
Anyone with a clear understanding of Jewish national interests today should identify Britain, as well as anyone seeking to take parts of our land from us, as an enemy of the Jewish liberation project.
This psychological categorization doesn’t necessitate armed conflict with the UK or anyone else. But defining attempts to impose a two-state outcome as an objectively hostile act neutralizes the confusion fostered by the “pro-Israel” arguments foreign leaders often make to advance their imperialist agendas, which would in turn clarify the reality of the situation and strengthen the resolve of our political leaders to resist.
