A group of eight Muslim-majority countries, including Israel’s ally the United Arab Emirates, praised the United Kingdom on Wednesday for announcing that it will impose sanctions on Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and called on other countries to do the same.
The foreign ministers of Qatar, Turkey, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, in a joint statement, said they “welcome the decision of the Government of the United Kingdom to ban the import of goods from illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
The statement came a day after British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced sweeping sanctions and a total ban on all dealings with West Bank settlements.
Shortly after Miliband’s speech, the leaders of the UK, France and Canada issued a joint statement confirming that they would “take steps to ban the importation of goods from settlements and enforce targeted measures against settlements and those who facilitate them or profit from them.”
Then, Canada, France, the UK, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden released a separate statement promising they would also “introduce national and/or support European restrictions on trade in goods with settlements,” or were at least “actively considering” doing so.
