Why the UK allows Israeli settlers to terrorise the West Bank
Imagine you are a farmer living in a village in the occupied West Bank.
You wake up one morning and notice a couple of caravans on a nearby hill: an illegal settlement.
The settlers move down the hill. They are armed. Many wear military uniforms.
At first, they harass and threaten you. They fire warning shots if you go out to cultivate your fields.
More caravans turn up, and the settlers invade your village. They destroy your agricultural equipment, steal your livestock, and shoot holes in the water tank.
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Then they beat you with iron bars. They might beat your wife, too, and intimidate your children.
They enter your home. They rummage through your possessions. They steal your money, papers, jewellery and household appliances.
If you have a car, they burn it. They steal your water.
If you call the police, nobody comes. If you resist, settlers call in the Israeli army. The soldiers arrest you, and treat the settlers as victims.
Forcible displacement
Your family has thrived in the slopes and grazing grounds of the West Bank hills since time immemorial. You refuse to be pushed out by this group of violent thugs from Brooklyn or eastern Europe.
Another outpost appears. More intimidation. More harassment.
Eventually, you surrender. You and your family move out. Now you are scraping a living, if you are lucky, on the edges of a town.
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Your memories, your history, your songs and your culture have disappeared. You have no hope, no livelihood, no future. It’s another settler victory.
Stories like these happen every day across the occupied West Bank.
According to a brilliant report by Hagar Shezaf in Haaretz (upon which I have drawn heavily for this piece), more than 80 Palestinian communities have been erased since 7 October 2023.
The United Nations says that in the first half of this year, 757 settler attacks resulted in Palestinian casualties or property damage - around four a day on average. And that’s likely an undercount, as many incidents go unreported.
There are no shortage of measures that would send a message to Israel. Britain could and should impose sanctions until Israel obeys international law
Since 7 October 2023, Israeli demolitions have displaced more than 2,900 Palestinians across the occupied West Bank, according to the UN, while “a further 2,400 Palestinians, nearly half of them children, have been forcibly displaced as a result of the actions of Israeli settlers”.
The UN grimly notes: “Permanently displacing the civilian population within occupied territory amounts to unlawful transfer, a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention and, depending on the circumstances, may also amount to a crime against humanity.”
The process of dispossession has sped up this autumn, as West Bank administrator Bezalel Smotrich, the Israeli finance minister, drives a massive programme of fresh land seizures and settlement construction. It’s part of a project to make the two-state solution impossible, and to drive Palestinians out of the West Bank.
This has been greeted by feeble protests from Britain. A handful of settlers (including Smotrich himself for repeatedly inciting violence against Palestinians) have been sanctioned. It’s a welcome, but woefully insufficient measure - and as such, typical of successive British governments.
Flagrant breach
In reality Britain has been, and remains, complicit in Israel’s capture of the West Bank, just as Britain has been complicit in Israel’s illegal destruction of Gaza.
Exhibit A is the wretched UK reaction to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling that Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territories is illegal. The ruling reaffirmed that the settlements themselves are illegal under international law.
The ICJ reached this definitive judgment in July 2024 - more than 15 months ago. Britain has not yet bothered to respond.
This comes as no surprise. Britain is itself in flagrant breach of the ICJ ruling, which orders member states not to provide “aid or assistance” that enables Israel to maintain its illegal presence in the occupied Palestinian territories.
In blatant disregard of the ICJ, Britain continues to trade with illegal West Bank settlements, thus playing an important role in keeping them economically afloat.
Bear in mind that agriculture is vital for Israeli settlers. They get a high proportion of their income from fruit and vegetables. Some 60 percent of Israeli agricultural products end up in the UK, sometimes misleadingly labelled as “West Bank”, giving the false impression to consumers that their origin is Palestinian.
The relationship is reciprocal. It is well known that British arms sold to Israel end up being used in Gaza. They are also used in the occupied West Bank.
The UK supplies drone components that are assembled in Israeli factories. According to Oxfam, these drones “are ever-present above Gaza and the West Bank, used both for spying missions and in attacks on civilians”.
'Moment for action'
Another example of British complicity: the ICJ instructed member states to ensure that Israel complies with international law in the occupied Palestinian territories, but Britain, like other western states, has made no attempt to follow these instructions.
There are no shortage of measures that would send a message to Israel. Britain could and should impose sanctions until Israel obeys international law. It could also end intelligence-sharing.
More importantly, Britain is complicit with Israel’s crime of apartheid, defined in the International Criminal Court’s Rome Statute as “inhumane acts” that are “committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime”.
Every major human rights group, including Israel’s Btselem, has recognised Israel as an apartheid state. Britain refuses to do so, meaning that its support for Israel recalls Britain’s consistent protection of racist South Africa during the postwar era.
One year on from the ICJ ruling, Gearoid O Cuinn, director of the Global Legal Action Network, remarked that Britain’s failure to respond was “not neutrality - it’s complicity”.
He added: “By continuing to arm, trade with, and politically shield Israel, the UK is helping to sustain an illegal occupation that the world’s highest court has declared must end. This is a moment for action, not deliberate delay.”
It’s all too obvious why the UK sits on its hands. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer doesn’t want to offend his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, let alone US President Donald Trump.
Consider this: there’s no mention of the West Bank in the much-vaunted 20-point US “peace plan” - and there might be a good reason for that.
To survive politically, Netanyahu needs the support of Smotrich’s far-right Religious Zionism party. Smotrich needs a free hand in the occupied West Bank - and the Trump-Netanyahu deal permits exactly that. Starmer’s Britain, it seems, is unwilling to upset this cosy arrangement.
Meanwhile, as the world looks on, Israeli settlers plant yet more settler outposts, each one a death knell for another ancient Palestinian community.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
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