The foreign ministers of 12 countries including the UK, France and Canada said on 8 September they would restrict trade in goods from Israeli settlements, the widest coordinated Western action against the settlement economy.

Israel closed Britain's consulate in Jerusalem the same day, expelled British diplomats monitoring the Gaza ceasefire, barred 12 British officials from entering the country and ended British training for Palestinian Authority forces.

Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the UK signed the joint statement, published by Global Affairs Canada and the Foreign Office. They confirmed their intention to introduce national restrictions or support European ones on trade in goods with settlements that are illegal under international law, and they built on measures already taken by Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands, Norway and Belgium.

The measures

Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told the House of Commons the UK would legislate within six to nine months and would act against companies and individuals providing construction, infrastructure, financing or real estate services for settlement expansion. He described settlers as terrorists conducting ethnic cleansing, citing "houses bulldozed, roads and public infrastructure destroyed, families displaced from their homes."

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said France would end trade with settlements and press for an EU-wide measure, warning the West Bank was "on the brink of explosion."

Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand tied the decision to settlement growth, saying "a two-state solution is the way forward."

The joint statement calls on Israel to halt settlement expansion and the transfer of civilian administrative powers immediately, to ensure accountability for settler violence and to investigate allegations against Israeli forces. It opposes actions tantamount to annexation of Palestinian land and forcible displacement of the Palestinian population. It also restates the signatories' condemnation of the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023 and recognises Israel's security interests.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar ordered the consulate closure and said the British move was morally distorted and amounted to blatant interference in a sovereign state.

Sa'ar had promised retaliation a week earlier, telling a ynet podcast on 1 September: "If Britain acts against Israel, Israel will act against Britain. There are tools. I'm saying this clearly and unequivocally." He said Britain would be making a major mistake by acting.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich wrote on X on 7 September: "Expel the British ambassador this evening. We will not be a trampled doormat of an antisemitic government, in a country conquered by radical Islam, trying to save itself from economic and social decline by attacking Jews and the State of Israel. The British Mandate in the Land of Israel is over."

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir wrote in Spanish on X the same night: "I call upon Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to recognise Argentina's sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands and to impose sanctions on Great Britain." He wrote that the Falkland Islands are occupied Argentine territory, and he demanded the closure of Britain's Jerusalem consulate.

President Isaac Herzog accused Britain of interfering in the Israeli election due on 27 October. US Ambassador Mike Huckabee called the action "discrimination against the Israeli government" and warned of consequences for British business.

The Palestinian presidency welcomed the statement as a step toward holding the settlement system accountable and asked the signatories to convert it into binding measures.

E1

The E1 plan covers 3,401 housing units on land between Jerusalem and Ma'ale Adumim, with a separate employment and commercial zone of 1,355 dunams east of Anata. The Civil Administration's Higher Planning Council approved the plans in August 2025. The housing tender opened for bids on 5 August 2026 and closes on 5 October. The employment zone tender opened on 20 July and closes on 14 September.

Built out, E1 severs the northern West Bank from the southern West Bank and cuts both off from East Jerusalem, according to the Israeli research organisation Ir Amim. The Bedouin community of Khan al-Ahmar faces demolition, with the government instructing authorities to relocate residents to a site near Abu Dis beside a landfill.

A joint leaders' statement on 20 August, signed by 22 governments and the European Commission, called the E1 tenders unacceptable. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed the plan saying there would be no Palestinian state. Smotrich said the project buries the idea of one.

The law

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying power from transferring parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, and prohibits forcible transfers of the protected population out of it. The International Committee of the Red Cross commentary published in 2025 holds that a transfer can be indirect, where conditions created by the occupier cause a population to leave without any explicit order.

UN Security Council Resolution 2334, adopted on 23 December 2016, declared the settlements a flagrant violation of international law with no legal validity. The Rome Statute lists the transfer of an occupying power's civilian population into occupied territory as a war crime.

The International Court of Justice ruled on 19 July 2024 that Israel's continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory is unlawful, that Israel must cease all new settlement activity and evacuate settlers, and that third states must not recognise the situation as legal or render aid or assistance in maintaining it. The Palestinian presidency cited that duty of non-recognition when it welcomed the 8 September statement.

Trade in settlement goods across the entire EU runs at less than €250 million a year, EU officials have told EUobserver.

Settler violence

OCHA recorded more than 1,000 settler attacks causing casualties or property damage in the West Bank in the first five months of 2026, an average of six a day and the highest rate on record. More than 230 communities were affected and more than 2,200 Palestinians displaced by settler violence and access restrictions, the agency said on 11 June.

Human Rights Watch documented 107 Palestinian communities fully or partly emptied since January 2023, affecting about 5,900 people. Settlers killed at least 15 Palestinians including two children by 24 July 2026, putting the year on course to pass the 2023 record of 16. Sarah Sanbar, the organisation's acting Israel and Palestine researcher, said "Israeli government and settlers share the same goal of maximum land and minimum Palestinians."

Settlers established 248 new outposts under the current government and now control more than one million dunams, about 18 per cent of the West Bank, according to the same report. The government approved roughly 50 million shekels for outposts, funding all-terrain vehicles, night-vision goggles and surveillance drones. Some 5,500 West Bank settlers serve as army reservists in regional defence battalions that hold full military authority.

Three per cent of documented settler violence cases since 2005 ended in conviction, Human Rights Watch said, and police cases against settlers have fallen 70 per cent since 2022.

Settlers killed Jihad Abu Naim, 32, and his 14-year-old nephew Aws Hamdi Naasan during an attack on a school in al-Mughayyir on 21 April 2026. Settlers killed the brothers Fahim and Muhammad Muammar at their family home in Qaryut on 2 March. Between 80 and 100 masked settlers attacked Khirbet Humsa on 13 March, subjecting residents to sexual violence and threats of kidnapping.

Israeli settlers in the West Bank including East Jerusalem numbered more than 700,000 by 2022, up from 520,000 a decade earlier, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights told the Human Rights Council.

Gaza

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry found on 16 September 2025 that Israel has committed genocide in the Gaza Strip, identifying four of the five genocidal acts in the Genocide Convention: killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about destruction, and imposing measures intended to prevent births. The Commission named Netanyahu, Herzog and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant as having incited genocidal acts. Israel rejected the findings.

Navi Pillay, who chaired the Commission, said "Israel is responsible for the commission of genocide in Gaza." She said the absence of action to stop genocide amounts to complicity.

Gaza's health ministry put the death toll at 73,658 with 174,622 wounded on 7 September 2026. Nearly 1,000 of those deaths came after the US-brokered ceasefire took effect, which remains in place while reconstruction, Israeli withdrawals and Palestinian governance stay deadlocked.

The International Court of Justice fixed 22 November 2027 for South Africa's reply and 22 May 2029 for Israel's rejoinder in the genocide case, in an order of 21 May 2026. Hearings on the merits follow those filings, which puts a judgment years away.

Influence operations

Israel's Ministry of Diaspora Affairs paid the Tel Aviv political marketing firm Stoic about $2 million for a covert campaign aimed at Democratic members of the US Congress, the New York Times and the Israeli watchdog FakeReporter reported on 5 June 2024. OpenAI said the operators used its models to generate articles and comments distributed through fake accounts. Meta removed 510 Facebook accounts and 32 Instagram accounts tied to the firm. Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli denied his ministry ran the campaign.

The Hanover Institute published 124 reports totalling more than 560,000 words between 6 and 14 August 2026, written to be retrieved and cited by AI chatbots answering questions about Gaza and Palestinian displacement. The site listed no legal entity, no address and no named researchers. Responsible Statecraft reported on 17 August that Israel's state advertising agency LaPam funded the work through Havas Media Germany to the New York production company Piro Inc., which received about $900,000; ynet put the Piro contracts at $1 million across two work orders.

Clock Tower X, run by former Trump digital director Brad Parscale, held a $15 million Israeli government contract between October 2025 and March 2026, ynet reported, alongside a $9.9 million contract with Targeted Communications Global. Israel's foreign ministry allocated 545 million shekels, about $181.6 million, to international messaging work.

Far-right ties

Likud joined the Patriots for Europe group as an observer in February 2025, the first party from outside the EU to do so, according to the Warsaw-based Centre for Eastern Studies. Sa'ar instructed diplomats on 28 February 2025 to open formal channels with France's National Rally, Spain's Vox and the Sweden Democrats, reversing a standing policy of no contact. Sa'ar said "some of these parties have bad roots, but we look at their deeds."

Netanyahu received a Patriots for Europe delegation on the sidelines of the group's conference on 26 and 27 January 2026, attended by representatives of National Rally, Vox, Fidesz, Vlaams Belang, Chega, the League, the Sweden Democrats, Law and Justice and the Alliance for the Union of Romanians, with Geert Wilders taking part remotely. Harald Vilimsky of Austria's Freedom Party met Netanyahu as part of the delegation.

Likud's observer status, the channels opened in February 2025 and the January 2026 meeting are the documented extent of the relationship. No public record establishes Israeli state funding of any of these parties. Several of the same governments that signed the 8 September statement, France and Sweden among them, have domestic opponents on that guest list.

What happens next

Britain's legislation lands within six to nine months, which places it after the Israeli election of 27 October. France will press the European Commission for a bloc-wide restriction, which requires agreement among member states that have blocked partial suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement since the Commission proposed it in September 2025. Bids on the E1 housing tender close on 5 October 2026.