UK imposes sanctions on seven groups that support West Bank settlers

The UK Foreign Office has announced sanctions against seven organisations that support illegal Israeli settlers in the West Bank, but held back from penalising two extremist members of the Israeli government as the former foreign secretary David Cameron had been planning.

Cameron told the BBC on Tuesday that he had intended to impose sanctions on Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, and the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and said he was concerned that the Labour government had not adopted his proposal. He said he had only held back from taking the step in the spring because he had been advised that it would be too political during the general election.

The Foreign Office said its latest sanctions had been in preparation for weeks and were not a kneejerk response to Cameron’s disclosure.

The sanctions are against three illegal settler outposts and four organisations the Foreign Office said had “supported and sponsored violence against communities in the West Bank”. It said there had been an unprecedented rise in settler violence, with 1,400 attacks on Palestinians recorded by the UN since October 2023.

The current foreign secretary, David Lammy, said: “When I went to the West Bank earlier this year I met Palestinians whose communities have suffered horrific violence at the hands of Israeli settlers.

“The inaction of the Israeli government has allowed an environment of impunity to flourish where settler violence has been allowed to increase unchecked. Settlers have shockingly even targeted schools and families with young children.”

He vowed further asset freezes would be imposed to stop “these heinous abuses of human rights”.

The outposts under sanctions are Tirzah Valley Farm, Meitarim and Shuvi Eretz. Among the organisations affected is Amana, considered a central arm of the Israeli settler movement and already under sanctions by the Canadian government.

Amana has been involved in the establishment of many settlements and unauthorised outposts through its Binyanei Bar Amana subsidiary. Its goal is to introduce 1 million settlers to the West Bank.

It is the third sanctions package against settlers that the Foreign Office has imposed, and it was announced an hour after the development minister, Anneliese Dodds, endured a torrid hour in the Commons faced with angry backbenchers, mainly from her own party, who demanded the government impose more sanctions on Israel for its repeated breaches of international humanitarian law.

Cameron earlier told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Smotrich and Gvir had said things like encouraging people to stop aid convoys getting into Gaza and encouraging extreme settlers in the West Bank with the appalling things they have been carrying out.”

He said it was necessary to tell the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, “when ministers in your government who are extremists and behave in this way we are prepared to use our sanctions regime to say this is simply not good enough and simply has to stop”.

Cameron said the Labour government’s partial ban on arms sales was a mistake, arguing it made no sense at a time when Israel needed to protect itself from state-on-state attacks from Iran.

He said: “There were other things we could do to put pressure on Netanyahu and say: ‘Of course we respect your right to self-defence but we do want you to act within the law.’”

In December last year Cameron announced on social media that a travel ban was being imposed against a small group of illegal settlers, saying : “We are banning those responsible for settler violence from entering the UK to make sure our country cannot be a home for people who commit these intimidating acts.”

In his BBC interview Cameron continued to defend the thrust of Israel’s policy to eradicate the threat posed by Hamas and Hezbollah.

He said: “On 7 October Israel was not just attacked in the south by Hamas but then continually with rockets by Hezbollah in the north. We all want this conflict to end but it has to end in a way that is sustainable so that it does not restart. That is why it is right to back Israel’s right of self-defence. But it is not a blank cheque, it’s not unconditional. We do want to see aid get through to Gaza and we do want the role of the UN in Lebanon to be respected.”