Britain's official position is that Israel's occupation of the West Bank is unlawful and that settler terrorists are carrying out ethnic cleansing, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told the House of Commons on 8 September.

Israel closed the British consulate in Jerusalem within hours, expelled British personnel from the Gaza ceasefire monitoring body at Kiryat Gat, revoked permission for a British team in Ramallah to train Palestinian Authority forces and barred 12 British nationals from entering the country.

Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer, said the finding of ethnic cleansing obliges Britain to take every legal measure available to press Israel to stop, because ethnic cleansing consists of war crimes and may amount to crimes against humanity.

The statement

"The official view of the British Government is that the occupation is unlawful," Miliband told MPs, citing Israel's entrenchment of control, its intention to extend permanent sovereignty and its expansion of illegal settlements.

"There is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank, perpetrated by settler terrorists," he said. "All too often the Israeli government has turned a blind eye to this and worse, members of it have made statements and taken actions to support the forced displacement of Palestinians."

Miliband quoted former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert describing "a violent and criminal effort to ethnically cleanse territories in the West Bank."

He said there was increasing evidence that war crimes have been committed, and declined to call Israel's conduct in Gaza genocide, saying Britain would wait for the international courts.

Miliband said Keir Starmer's government should have moved sooner. "I'll say very bluntly we should have acted earlier," he told MPs, adding that it took a new prime minister to recognise the gravity of the situation.

Andy Burnham wrote in the Guardian that Britain had been "hesitant to act, fearful of being accused of being anti-Israel."

Burnham, Emmanuel Macron and Mark Carney said in a joint statement that they recognised the State of Palestine one year ago and that "the time has come to take further action... before it is too late." The three will co-chair a meeting at the UN General Assembly later this month.

The measures

Miliband announced seven measures: an import ban on goods from illegal settlements; a ban on advertising settlements in the UK; sanctions on companies providing construction, infrastructure, financing or real estate services to settlements; sanctions on extremist settlers inciting violence; an extended human rights sanctions regime covering settlement expansion; a double-lock ban on arms licences and other exports that materially contribute to the occupation; and humanitarian and health support for Gaza.

Miliband also sanctioned Al-Qard Al-Hassan, the financing arm of Lebanese Hezbollah, reimposed major economic sanctions on Iran in line with the EU and the U.S. and reported Iran to the UN Security Council over nuclear violations.

Ministers expect the legislation within nine months. Legal challenge could delay it.

Britain stopped supplying parts directly to Israel's F-35 programme in October 2024 under David Lammy. Miliband told the Commons that ending the remaining indirect supply through the global pool would mean bringing down a programme that NATO allies depend on.

Annual trade between the two countries runs at about $8 billion. Britain sells Israel medicinal and pharmaceutical products and buys fruit and vegetables. Settlement goods are a fraction of that.

Israel's retaliation

Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar said Miliband's accusations in Parliament were "outrageous lies" and called the British measures "morally distorted" and blatant interference in a sovereign state's affairs. He said the UK government was systematically working against the state of Israel, according to the Guardian.

The 12 barred from entry are Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott, John McDonnell, Richard Burgon, Naz Shah, Zarah Sultana, Carla Denyer, Sian Berry, Ellie Chowns, Adrian Ramsay, Hannah Spencer and Fahad Ansari, director of Riverway to the Sea. Four are Green MPs, including the party's parliamentary leader and its co-leader.

Corbyn said Israel's genocide cannot go unpunished and called the ban shocking evidence that Israel does not want the world to see what is happening in Palestine. Burgon said the sanction would not intimidate him into silence, and that he has given evidence to the International Criminal Court.

President Isaac Herzog said sanctions were the wrong instrument. "Sanctions are not a solution. Dialogue is," he said, calling the British decision an error of judgement that put Britain on the wrong side of history. He separately accused Britain of interfering in the Israeli election due on 27 October.

The threats

Sa'ar issued his threat a week before Miliband spoke, 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 the era in which states could act against Israel without a response had ended.

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."

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.

Netanyahu made no statement on the British measures.

Shai Masot, the Israeli embassy's senior political officer in London and its chief liaison with MPs, was filmed by an undercover Al Jazeera reporter in autumn 2016 discussing a list of politicians to "take down," naming Foreign Office minister Alan Duncan and foreign affairs committee chair Crispin Blunt. Ambassador Mark Regev telephoned Duncan to apologise after the footage aired in January 2017, calling the remarks unacceptable. Masot resigned. The Foreign Office declared the matter closed and opened no inquiry.

Sa'ar and the Conservatives

Sa'ar telephoned Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch and shadow foreign secretary Tom Tugendhat on the evening of the announcement, hours after ordering the consulate shut.

"I thanked them for their firm opposition to the hostile Labour Government's announcement today and its series of anti-Israel policies since taking office," he wrote on X. "I welcomed their support for the friendship with Israel and their commitment for the future relations between our countries."

Badenoch had written in the Jewish Chronicle accusing Labour of an anti-Israel obsession. Tugendhat told the Commons that illegal settlements are wrong but said the measures would not reduce the complexity of the conflict, and that the Palestinian and Israeli economies are too interconnected for a settlement goods ban to work.

Edward Leigh, the longest-serving member of Conservative Friends of Israel, broke with his front bench. "What is happening in the West Bank is absolutely violent and egregious. It is ethnic cleansing," he told the Commons.

Richard Tice, Reform UK's deputy leader, said the British government was "anti Jew" and that the sanctions would "embolden antisemitic hate crimes in UK."

Israel and the British right

Israel's foreign ministry paid about £50,000 to Conexión Israel, a Jerusalem company, to run a Reform UK delegation to Israel in November 2025, according to Israeli government spending data obtained by Declassified UK.

David Bull, then Reform's chairman, travelled with Gawain Towler of the party board, Lancashire county council leader Stephen Atkinson, London assembly member Alex Wilson and two members of Tice's parliamentary staff. Atkinson and Wilson each declared £4,861 in the relevant registers. The delegation visited the occupied Golan Heights, Israeli national police headquarters, Nir Oz and the Nova festival site. Bull said the trip was "life changing" and that Reform would always stand with the Israeli people.

Tice had visited Israel two months earlier on a trip funded by Reform Friends of Israel.

Jason Pearlman set up Reform Friends of Israel while serving as international media adviser to Herzog, a post he held until December 2025. He told Declassified UK in April 2025 that he had held "a dinner with Nigel [Farage] and some key backers" to discuss seed funding for the group. Pearlman said the group "did not and does not receive any funds from the Israeli or any other government," and told Middle East Eye he had left it after returning to live in Israel for personal reasons.

Alan Mendoza, executive director of the Henry Jackson Society, left the Conservatives on 20 November 2025 to become Reform's chief adviser on global affairs. Middle East Eye reported that he is also president of Jewish National Fund UK.

Friends of Israel groups across Labour, the Conservatives and Reform funded at least 56 trips for British politicians at a cost of about £133,000 over two years, Declassified UK found from the parliamentary register of interests.

Amichai Chikli, Israel's diaspora affairs minister, invited Tommy Robinson to Israel in October 2025. Robinson, founder of the English Defence League, has been imprisoned five times for offences including fraud, drug offences and libelling a Syrian refugee. He arrived on 16 October, toured the Nova festival site, visited Mahane Yehuda market and met the anti-immigration campaigner Sheffi Paz in Tel Aviv. He said Netanyahu and his party were strong and Starmer's government weak. Chikli said officials confronting terrorism must be "far, far more decisive, far, far more aggressive."

The Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council said in a joint statement that Robinson was "a thug who represents the very worst of Britain" and that hosting him undermines those genuinely working against Islamist extremism. Gilad Kariv, who chairs the Knesset committee on diaspora affairs, called the invitation a slap in the face to British and diaspora Jews and demanded an apology. Chikli said the Board had become a political organisation aligned with left-wing and pro-Palestinian parties.

Chikli's ministry paid the Tel Aviv marketing firm Stoic about $2 million in 2024 for the covert campaign of fake accounts aimed at members of the US Congress that Meta and OpenAI later dismantled. Chikli denied his ministry ran it.

The Middle East Forum, a US think tank, funded Tommy Robinson's legal costs and organised rallies in his support in 2018. No Israeli state body has been shown to have funded Robinson or Reform UK as a party.

The U.S. position

Marco Rubio said the U.S. would not follow Britain. "Obviously, we're not going to do what the UK did," the secretary of state said, adding that he did not want anything destabilising in the West Bank while the 20-point Gaza plan and the Board of Peace were in progress.

Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, warned of retaliatory trade action against Britain and called the measures discrimination against the Israeli government and against the Jewish people.

Burnham briefed Donald Trump on the plan before it was announced.

British reaction

Ephraim Mirvis, the chief rabbi, said the announcement made "truly a dark day for British Jews" and said the measures would strengthen the extremism they target, coming on the eve of Rosh Hashanah.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews recorded deep regret and said announcing the measures during an Israeli election risked perverse consequences.

Yachad, a British Jewish organisation that backs a negotiated settlement, said the policies target the occupation rather than Israel and draw a clear line between the state and the settlement enterprise.

Ellie Chowns, the Greens' parliamentary leader and one of the 12 barred from Israel, welcomed the measures as overdue and said Britain's legal duty to prevent genocide arose long ago. She called for a full two-way arms embargo, an end to military and intelligence cooperation, withdrawal from the UK-Israel trade and partnership agreement and restrictions covering F-35 components supplied through the international pool.

Emily Thornberry, who chairs the foreign affairs select committee, said Britain was no longer a bystander wringing its hands. Naz Shah, also barred from Israel, said Britain had led. Abtisam Mohamed asked whether the government supports the ICC arrest warrants against Israeli ministers. Sadiq Khan said there can be no two-state solution if no viable state is left to call Palestine. Humza Yousaf called for an end to all weapons and military components going to Israel.

Enforcement

Anshel Pfeffer, the Economist's Israel correspondent, said the settlement sanctions are justified but amount to an empty gesture unless they reach the Israeli government and the Israeli banks financing settlement construction, which he doubts they will.

Jess Stober, legal director at the Global Echo Litigation Centre, said the argument that settlement goods cannot be told apart from Israeli goods is nonsensical. HMRC has checked the originating status of Israeli imports since 2020, from tahini and dates to cake mix and plastic sheets, because the UK-Israel free trade deal does not cover settlement goods and they carry higher tariffs.

Mislabelled settlement avocados currently cost an importer extra tariffs, Stober said. Under a ban the shipment is returned, perishes, and everyone in the supply chain loses money, with civil and criminal penalties available.

Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli political analyst, said the measures are unlikely to shift the Israeli election because voters are focused on domestic matters and on a Haaretz report published the same day about warnings Benjamin Netanyahu received before 7 October 2023.

Israel votes on 27 October. Burnham, Macron and Carney co-chair their UN General Assembly meeting before then.