Around 140 Labour MPs have written to the foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, calling on the UK government to ban trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, warning that sanctions on individual settlers and ministers are not enough to stop Israel’s accelerating annexation drive.
In a letter dated 7 June, the MPs urge Cooper to take “urgent, concrete action to counter the escalation of violations against Palestinians” by “ending trade with illegal Israeli settlements.”
The MPs warn that Israel’s move to prepare the forced displacement of the Palestinian Bedouin community of Khan Al-Ahmar forms part of a wider policy of “erasure, displacement and state-backed settler violence” in the occupied West Bank. They say the planned demolition of the community and destruction of its property “would constitute the war crime of forcible transfer” and is tied to Israel’s E1 settlement plan, which seeks “to bisect the West Bank” and make the two-state solution “an impossibility.”.
Such a move, the MPs warn, “would constitute the war crime of forcible transfer.” They add that Khan Al-Ahmar has faced “a gruelling struggle against erasure, displacement and state-backed settler violence” as part of Israel’s E1 settlement plan, which they say seeks “to bisect the West Bank” and make a two-state solution “an impossibility.”
