During his first 51 days in 10 Downing Street, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham had precious little to say about foreign affairs. His decision to banish rival Ed Miliband to the Foreign Office was widely read as an attempt to neutralize a domestic competitor while signaling that global diplomacy would take a backseat to local priorities.
Why, then, have Israeli settlements suddenly leapfrogged to the top of his government’s agenda?
Miliband’s headline act—a total import ban on goods produced in so-called settlements in Judea and Samaria (what they also call the “West Bank”)—is sold as a moral crusade. In reality, it is economic noise. Direct trade between Judea and Samaria and the United Kingdom amounts to roughly 6 million euros (about $8.1 million) annually, a microscopic 0.1% of Britain’s bilateral trade with Israel.
The policy will barely register in Israeli balance sheets, but its fallout on the ground will be immediate—and borne almost entirely by Palestinians. When BDS activists forced SodaStream out of Judea in 2014, 500 Palestinian workers lost well-paying jobs overnight. Today, tens of thousands of Palestinians earn far higher than the average local wage working in Israeli enterprise zones. Stifling those enterprises does not liberate Palestinians; it impoverishes them.
Israel’s retaliation has been predictably swift: terminating British security training for the Palestinian Authority, ending U.K. involvement in Gaza aid coordination and curbing operations at the British Consulate in eastern Jerusalem. Add to this a furious backlash from Washington—where U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has openly warned of economic friction—and the strategic balance sheet looks disastrous.
So why pursue a policy that hurts Palestinians, alienates key allies and imperils intelligence cooperation vital to British security?
Look no further than the upcoming parliamentary by-election in Holborn and St. Pancras, forced by the sudden resignation of the man who until 51 days ago was prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer.
Facing a formidable Green Party challenge in a constituency with a substantial Muslim electorate, Labour is running scared, and it may have good reason to: During the previous general election, independent pro-Gaza candidate Andrew Feinstein, who is Jewish, finished second to Starmer, capturing nearly 19% of the local vote. This time a far less known Labour candidate will face the high-profile Green Party leader Zac Polanski.
The left-of-center Guardian newspaper led with a headline last week: “Burnham sees sanctions against Israeli settlements as an electoral asset.” Labour’s new Israel policy isn’t about statehood; it’s about canvassing.
The tragic irony is plain: Whitehall is paying lip service to a two-state solution while discarding the very people living there to win a suburban London seat. If Palestinians want real allies, they should look elsewhere. The British government isn’t acting in their interest. It’s just using them as campaign collateral.
