Sanction and Be Damned

On 9 September 2026 the UK Government announced it would legislate for wide ranging sanctions against produce from the West Bank. It was joined by a pack of 11 other supporting countries. The US declined to push back.

Clearly the UK government was virtue signalling to the huge swathe of former Labour voters it recently lost in local government elections, to independent ‘Pro Gaza’ fringe candidates. But Israelis would be wrong to avoid introspection. The sanctions were triggered by announcing a tender to build housed at E1 on the West Bank, and because of a widely held belief that rising numbers of “settler” violence against Palestinians is either not controlled, or even encouraged, by Israel’s government. The government failure to control this violence, which includes murder, brings domestic and international shame on Israel.

The over-reaction of sanctions was entirely predictable.  “Settler” violence and the tender for c 1,200 homes on E1, together provided a perfect moral platform to justify an attack on Israel.  This diplomatic debacle follows years of inept neglect, by government, of Israel’s international relations. Our leaders simply failed to hear the music. It now reaps the reward for having long permitted the worst extremists to become its standard-bearers.

The sanctions themselves are utterly misguided. Expressed to ‘support’ a two-state solution, they instead build barriers against it. The jobs of many thousands of Palestinians, presently enjoying secure and well-paid employment by Israeli owned business in the West Bank, are now at risk. Thus commercial activity between Jews and Arabs – surely an essential element of any future stable Palestinian state – is fatally weakened.

More fundamentally, this move strengthens Israeli and Palestinian resolve against a two-state solution.

Israelis are understandably concerned that any independent state on the West Bank will be captured by the well-funded proxies of states that seek to destroy Israel – principally Iran. This was dangerous enough when it occurred in Gaza. In the West Bank –larger than Gaza and closer to most Israeli population centres – a two-state solution today looks, to most Israelis, like national suicide.

Palestinians who favour violence will feel emboldened, rewarded and vindicated, just as they did when the UK “recognised” a Palestinian State. State recognition and sanctions were both unilateral, punishing Israel, with no reciprocal punishment for Palestinian violence. The emboldened and violent will silenced any moderate voices on either side, thus strengthening the principal barrier to a two-state solution.

The UK government surely knows its sanctions might win votes on home turf, but will cause net harm to Palestinians, Israelis and to the UK, whose c £6bn trade with Israel is also put at risk.  

But Israelis can mitigate the harm sanctions might cause. Practically, the sanctions will be hard to draft, and harder to monitor and enforce. We encounter many anti-sanctions arguments when advising in this field: for example, the sanctions – when drafted – might breach existing UK treaty obligations, or UK anti-discrimination legislation. The mixed product supply chain, typical of today’s manufacturing and assembly methods, defies simple solutions as to origin labelling, thus introducing a further line of attack.

Companies potentially threatened by the legislation would be advised to consider taking steps now to protect themselves, for example by becoming ‘sanctions proof’.

Finally, it is worth glancing at the glib assumption that all Jewish Israelis living over the Green Line do so illegally – a legal fiction which cloaks UK action with a further thin veneer of virtue.

Some Israelis merely returned to West Bank homes that their parents purchased under UK Mandate law, but from which they were expelled by an invading Jordanian army in 1948. Jordan has long since abandoned any claim to those homes. Calling those Jews ‘illegal settlers’ is equivalent to calling Ukrainians returning to Crimea – assuming a Russian retreat – illegal settlers. The international law position is far more nuanced and complex than the UK government allows.

The underlying assumption behind the sanctions is, by contrast, horribly clear. Were a Palestinian State set up, the UK appears to believe that all Jews should be expelled from it, simply for being Jewish. Thus the UK government – and the other 11 countries that follow it – are all intending to legislate for ethnic cleansing of Jews. Luckily the foreign secretary of England assures Israelis that he is our friend.

Trevor Asserson

Trevor Asserson is the senior partner of Israel’s largest international law firm, which advises on sanctions related legal questions under English law. The thoughts expressed are his private views and not those of the firm.