HonestReporting has detailed the importance of the E1 corridor to Israel’s security. But that’s clearly not going to be enough to convince British Prime Minister Andy Burnham in advance of the UK government’s plans to implement a boycott of Israeli settlement goods and services in the coming weeks.
But Burnham isn’t having it all his own way in the British press. The Times has labeled it “performative politics” in a staff editorial:
The pretext for the sanctions is the long-planned construction of 1,200 homes by Israel just east of the densely populated city of Jerusalem, a zone known as E1. The obstacles to exclusively boycotting goods and services from this area would be considerable. In practice, as Labour Friends of Israel warns, any attempted embargo would probably become a de facto ban on trade with Israel. Zealots in Labour’s ranks may welcome that — though it is a bleak irony that many Palestinian businesses would be hit hard too.
However, it is the very notion that sanctions are justified in the first place that does not survive scrutiny. Ed Miliband, the foreign secretary, has branded the E1 settlement project “unacceptable and destructive”, joining those who allege the new housing jeopardises the eventual creation of a Palestinian state. But those alarmist claims are overblown. There has never been any realistic two-state solution under which the E1 settlement would fall outside Israeli territory. Under the borders presented at Camp David in 2000 — when the Palestinians disastrously spurned a viable offer of statehood — E1 would have remained part of Israel. The Oslo accords, too, placed the land under Israeli administration. Yet Israel’s critics still alight on every zoning decision as an opportunity to accuse it of wrongdoing.
Meanwhile, international law expert Natasha Hausdorff weighs in at the Daily Telegraph:
The paradox is stark. In the name of an international law obligation that does not exist, the Government proposes discriminatory measures that violate Britain’s actual treaty obligations, put British businesses at risk, harm Arab Palestinian workers, undermine Israeli-Arab economic co-operation and further fuel the obsessive singling-out of the Jewish state.
In the current climate, the political motivations behind this otherwise inexplicable proposal are obvious. So too is its impact: singling out the Jewish state to curry political favour fans the flames of anti-Semitism and puts British Jews at risk.
HonestReporting has been covering the E1 proposals for nearly the entire existence of the organization. And each time the issue has made headlines (which is many), the end result has been a whole lot of nothing, both on the Israeli end and from those who have kicked up a proverbial stink on every occasion.
But this time, is E1 finally going to reach a head?
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© Divuach Ne’eman R”A, 2025
