The UK announced further sanctions and a suspension of trade negotiations with Israel on Tuesday, as it condemned its “monstrous” 11-week aid blockade and renewed military offensive in the Gaza Strip.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy announced a series of measures as international condemnation of Israel’s actions in Gaza continued to mount.
Mr Lammy announced the suspension of trade talks, imposed sanctions on three individuals and four entities involved in the settler movement, and said Benjamin Netanyahu’s actions were “wholly disproportionate” and “utterly counterproductive”.
As MPs in the Commons called on him to label it a genocide and go further with sanctions, Mr Lammy said: “We must call this what it is. It is extremism. It is dangerous. It is repellent. It is monstrous and I condemn it in the strongest possible terms.”
The measures were announced after the UK, France and Canada warned Mr Netanyahu they would take “concrete action” unless Israel frees up humanitarian aid and stops violence in Gaza.
On Tuesday the UN’s humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher warned that 14,000 Palestinian babies could die by Thursday unless action is taken to ease the crisis in which civilians are severely malnourished, although he did not say what this claim was based on. The UN has not repeated that figure since then but on Wednesday, the UN’s World Food Programme representative in East Jerusalem Antoine Renard told the BBC the “whole population is on the brink of starvation”.
Here is a look at what sanctions the UK has placed on Israel this week and in the past.
The Foreign Office announced new sanctions against West Bank settlers in “response to the persistent cycle of serious violence” in the region.
Mr Lammy condemned the actions of “extremist” settlers in the West Bank, saying Mr Netanyahu’s administration has a responsibility to intervene to halt their actions.
The measures announced on Tuesday include financial restrictions and travel bans. They cover prominent settler leader Daniella Weiss and two other individuals, as well as two illegal outposts and two organisations that the Foreign Office said supported, incited and promoted violence against Palestinian communities.
Ms Weiss, a target of the sanctions who the government described as a “high-profile extremist settler leader”, was a key focus of the recent Louis Theroux BBC documentary Settlers, which shone a light on the tactics of Israeli settlers in the Palestinian West Bank.
The measures follow a dramatic surge in settler violence in the West Bank, with the UN recording over 1,800 attacks by settlers against Palestinian communities since 1 January 2024.
The UK has suspended trade deal talks with Israel and summoned the country’s ambassador.
In the Commons, Mr Lammy said: “We have suspended negotiations with this Israeli government on a new free trade agreement.”
