Key Takeaways:
- Ed Miliband announced on September 8 that the UK will sanction Israeli settlements.
- The sweeping sanctions specifically single out Jewish communities, treating them differently from their Arab neighbors.
- Miliband frames the policy as protecting a two-state solution, but the actual mechanism penalizes Jewish presence based on geography, not conduct.
On September 8, UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced a set of sanctions, supposedly meant to single out goods produced by operations in the West Bank.
The new measures are a supposed reaction to prevent Israel from moving forward with the E1 building tender – a settlement plan that was first outlined in 1994 and by and large supported by Israeli prime ministers of all political persuasions, or at the very least not disrupted, ever since.
Related Reading: E1: Just Another Pretext to Discriminate Against Jews
The UK says the measures are intended to protect the viability of a two-state solution, which it argues is being threatened by Jewish settlement expansion. Yet this policy rests on the assumption that increased pressure on Israel will help produce a political outcome that Palestinian leadership has repeatedly failed to accept.
In his speech, Miliband claimed the sanctions will exclusively target “illegal settlements and settlement expansion, not Israel.”
The claim is far from the truth.
What began as a plan to theoretically put a stop to building in E1 has evidently spiralled into a discriminatory plan targeting Jewish Israelis, both those living in the West Bank and in eastern Jerusalem.
There is no measure in place to ensure the ban targets only businesses operating in the West Bank or settlement expansion more generally. In fact, the trade ban would have wide-reaching consequences that specifically single out Jewish Israelis.
The UK Foreign Office already maintains an extensive list of “non-eligible” locations, identified by postal codes and locality names, whose products are excluded from preferential tariff treatment under the UK-Israel trade agreement. The list, last updated in August 2025, includes postcodes in “East Jerusalem.” As The National Review notes, even the American Embassy in Jerusalem falls under the classification of a settlement by virtue of its postal code.
Within the realm of the trade ban, British citizens can buy property in an Arab neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem, while the same transaction would be unable to be executed if the neighborhood is Jewish. Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, aptly noted that such a targeted ban is “discrimination against the Jewish people.”
Evidently, Miliband believes that it is “unlawful” for Jewish Israelis to be living in their national and historic homeland, including their nation’s capital. While he claims that Jews are allowed to “visit the Old City [of Jerusalem],” living in or near it would cross the line. Contrarily, anyone else who is not Jewish would not be viewed under the same lens of “unlawfulness” that Jews are viewed under.
The result of the trade ban is a far broader principle than opposition to settlement expansion – it is opposition to Jewish presence, singling out Jewish Israelis based on where they live and work. It won’t bring the region any closer to peace, but instead will likely trigger a deeper contempt felt by world Jewry, who believe Jews, like everyone else, have the same fundamental rights, including the right to live in their historic homeland.
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© Divuach Ne’eman R”A, 2025
