UK pauses trade talks and imposes sanctions on Israeli settlers as European leaders mount pressure on Israel to end its Gaza offensive.
The leaders of the United Kingdom, France and Canada have “strongly opposed” the expansion of Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, threatening to “take concrete actions” if Israel does not cease its onslaught and lift restrictions on aid supply to the Palestinian enclave.
In a statement released on Monday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said they also oppose settlement expansions in the occupied West Bank. Settler violence has surged in the occupied West Bank as the world’s focus has remained on Gaza. Nearly 1,000 Palestinians have been killed and thousands displaced in Israeli raids.
The statement comes weeks after the Netherlands urged the European Union (EU) to review a trade agreement with Israel as the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has intensified its bombardment of Gaza amid an aid blockade in place since March 2.
Western countries backed Israel’s right to self-defence when Netanyahu’s government launched a devastating offensive in Gaza on October 7, 2023. That offensive has killed more than 53,000 Palestinians and turned vast swathes of Gaza into rubble.
On Tuesday, the EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said that Israel has the right to defend itself, but its current actions go beyond proportionate self-defence.
So what steps might Western countries take against Israel, and has Israel’s latest Gaza onslaught forced them to change their position? Here is what you need to know:
“If Israel does not cease the renewed military offensive and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid, we will take further concrete actions in response,” the leaders’ statement said.
“The Israeli Government’s denial of essential humanitarian assistance to the civilian population is unacceptable and risks breaching International Humanitarian Law.
“We condemn the abhorrent language used recently by members of the Israeli Government, threatening that, in their despair at the destruction of Gaza, civilians will start to relocate. Permanent forced displacement is a breach of international humanitarian law.”
The three Western leaders said that while they supported Israel’s right to defend itself following Hamas’s attack on October 7, “this escalation is wholly disproportionate”.
“We will not stand by while the Netanyahu Government pursues these egregious actions,” they said.
What did the UK, France and Canada say?
On Tuesday, the UK announced it would suspend trade talks with Israel over the Gaza war. It also imposed sanctions on settlers and organisations backing violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
Israel’s conduct in its war on Gaza and the government’s support for illegal settlements is “damaging our relationship with your government”, said British Foreign Secretary David Lammy.
However, the United Nations’ relief chief Tom Fletcher called the entry of the trucks a “drop in the ocean”, adding that “significantly more aid must be allowed into Gaza”.
Fletcher on Tuesday warned that 14,000 Palestinian babies were at risk of dying in the next 48 hours if aid doesn’t reach them – a figure he called “utterly chilling”. Some half a million people in Gaza, or one in five Palestinians, are facing starvation due to the Israeli blockade.
Starving Palestinians have resorted to eating animal feed and flour mixed with sand, highlighting acute suffering among the 2.3 million people in Gaza.
The UN humanitarian office’s spokesman Jens Laerke said on Tuesday that about 100 more trucks have been approved by Israel to enter Gaza.
Shifting their focus to the occupied West Bank, the leaders of the UK, France and Canada said they opposed all attempts to expand Israeli settlements, as they are “illegal and undermine the viability of a Palestinian state and the security of both Israelis and Palestinians”.
“We will not hesitate to take further action, including targeted sanctions,” they said.
Yara Hawari, co-director of Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, says the statement by the UK, Canada, and France is “reflective of states wanting to backtrack and try and cover up their complicity”, highlighting that the situation in Gaza is the “worst that it has ever been” and that “the genocide is reaching new levels of cruelty and inhumaneness”.
“They can point to the statement and say, you know, well, we did … stand up against it,” Hawari told media, adding that none have stopped arms sales to Israel.
Hawari specifically referenced the UK’s role, saying it was “particularly complicit in this”. “There are reports coming out every day on how many weapons have been transferred from the UK to Israel over the course of the last 19 months,” she said.
Sweden’s Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said on Tuesday that her country will push for EU sanctions against Israeli ministers because of insufficient steps to protect civilians in Gaza.
“Since we do not see a clear improvement for the civilians in Gaza, we need to raise the tone further. We will therefore now also push for EU sanctions against individual Israeli ministers,” Stenergard said in a statement.
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