The UK’s planned ban on goods from Israeli settlements may be welcome, but it risks amounting to little more than a public relations move unless London follows it with wider steps, the UN’s special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, said. Albanese called a ban on settlement goods “a change in UK government stance and absolutely important,” but told the Guardian the measure must be part of “a true paradigm shift to Israel-Palestine” that implements the 2024 advisory opinion of the international court of justice.
Albanese urged that the policy not be confined to agricultural products and cosmetics, arguing those goods represent only a fraction of what sustains the occupation and that Israel could absorb their loss. She recommended expanding restrictions to services, progressively suspending British intelligence cooperation, halting all arms licensing and scrutinising military-related flights out of RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus. If such measures are omitted, she warned, the action “over time come to be seen as not amounting to a reckoning, but a press release.”
The debate over the reset in UK policy has already attracted sharp reactions. The foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, has pledged a more decisive stance on settlements and other aspects of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and Palestinian groups in the UK are withholding judgment until full details are published on Tuesday. The US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, posted on X that Downing Street was motivated by “Jew hatred,” a remark that did not note Miliband’s own Jewish background. The Israeli foreign ministry said there are no restrictions on bringing medicines into Gaza and that no medicine is being blocked.
Albanese also singled out the tender for the E1 project, which she said would sever East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. She noted bids close a week before Israel’s elections on 27 October but argued London cannot simply let the tenders pass, because large-scale construction requires finance, insurance and contractors. She urged the UK to threaten sanctions or similar measures against firms that cooperate with what she described as an act of annexation.
Finally, Albanese called on Britain to align with South Africa’s case before the ICJ and to back Nicaragua when the court hears Germany’s preliminary objections on Monday in a separate filing that alleges Berlin’s arms sales to Israel amount to complicity in genocide. The coming announcements will test whether the UK’s recalibration is a substantive policy shift or a narrower, symbolic response.
