As British Prime Minister Andy Burnham launches a campaign against Israeli settlers in the West Bank, officials in Jerusalem find the United States is not rushing to their defense as usual.
The United Kingdom is placing trade sanctions on Israeli settlements in the West Bank, citing “unprecedented levels of settler violence and settlement expansion” and threats to a future two-state solution. Burnham is framing the newly unrolled sanctions — which have been adopted by at least 11 other countries, including major economic powers such as France and Poland — as an opportunity for Britain to show moral leadership on the world stage.
“In this difficult and dangerous world Britain has to stand for something, Britain has to show leadership, Britain has to stand for fairness against injustice,” the premier told parliament, flanked by Foreign Minister Ed Miliband. “Where people are being bullied out of their homes and intimidated, we will always stand with the underdog and take what action we can to support them.”
“That … is leadership on the world stage — Britain being true to what it’s always been about,” he continued. “That is what the British people expect of us, and that is what this government will do.”
The full list of countries adopting the sanctions includes Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the U.K. These nations are promising to “introduce national and/or support European restrictions on trade in goods with settlements which are illegal under international law” unless the Israeli government halts the “expansion of settlements and civilian administrative powers, ensure accountability for settler violence, and investigate allegations against Israeli forces.”
Several of these countries were already involved in a prior round of sanctions over the settler violence issue earlier this year.
Backlash from Jerusalem has been fierce, with the Israeli government immediately ordering the British government to close its consulate within the next 30 days.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar called the sanctions “morally distorted” and accused the British government of “blatant interference in the affairs of a sovereign state and its electoral process.”
Israel is holding its parliamentary elections in late October, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu battling to remain in office.
One of the most notable aspects of the feud — which only furthers ideological and political divides that have fomented between Europe and Israel, particularly after close to a dozen formally recognized a Palestinian state last year — is that the U.S. has largely remained on the sidelines.
A report from Axios asserts that when Burnham called Trump to inform him of the pending sanctions, the president did not push back or even argue for him to reconsider.
Trump has not publicly commented on the matter. The Washington Examiner reached out to the White House for comment, but was referred to remarks made Tuesday by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“The president hasn’t commented on this, and neither have I. We were made aware that they are gonna make this decision. We heard their arguments as to why,” Rubio told reporters at the Homestead Air Reserve Base in Florida. “We share the goal of stability. We don’t want to see an uptick in violence or tensions in the West Bank in a tenuous time in the region.”
Rubio voiced disapproval for “anything destabilizing going on right now in the West Bank with so much going on in the region,” citing concerns it could interfere with the Board of Peace and its 20-point plan for reconstructing Gaza.
“Obviously, we’re not going to do what the U.K. did. We saw their announcement today, but I don’t have any comment on it right now,” he added.
Settler violence against Palestinians living in the West Bank has been a high-profile issue in Israel for years, especially following the Oct. 7 massacres launched by Hamas in 2023. The United Nations previously claimed there has been an average of six attacks by settlers per day this year.
Attacks include a slew of violent behaviors ranging from direct physical altercations, vandalism, terroristic threats, graffiti, and even manslaughter.
Netanyahu has repeatedly dismissed the idea that there is a widespread problem of Israeli settlers terrorizing Palestinian residents, dismissing the mobs as a “handful of kids.” He maintained that position in July after a delegation to the West Bank led by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) was reportedly detained by “Israeli settlers, brandishing American-made M4s.”
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee is perhaps the only relevant official loudly voicing opposition to the sanctions. Though the ambassador has previously acknowledged the violence perpetrated by “Israeli terrorists” in the Palestinian territory, he has maintained that they are a “very small minority.”
“The Brits have lost it. The Jew hate of their government knows no boundaries and knows no facts,” he told the BBC. “I feel like that it’s a discrimination against the Israeli government. It’s a discrimination against the Jewish people. And I don’t understand the rationale.”
Huckabee specifically questioned why the British government wasn’t rolling out “sanctions against North Korea, China, Russia.” The U.K. does enforce tight sanctions on all three of those countries.
During the interview, Huckabee accused the British government of acting out of antisemitic ideology and bombastically threatened American countermeasures that would have a “huge economic impact on British businesses.”
But following Rubio’s hand-waving of the issue, it does not seem the administration is, thus far, interested in getting involved.
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Burnham has yet to meet with Netanyahu — a symptom of the two countries’ soured relations.
The Israeli premier is scrambling to whip together his right-wing coalition as polls show they have a small edge in the Knesset elections in October.
Despite polling ahead of his opponents’ coalition, neither bloc is currently showing enough support to gain a majority.