UK government urged to act over proposed illegal Israeli settlement

A group of leading former UK ambassadors and high commissioners has called on the UK government to threaten action against any companies bidding to build an illegal Israeli settlement “designed to divide the West Bank in two and destroy Palestine’s viability”.

In a letter published in the Guardian, the 32 former diplomats said tenders for the planned E1 settlement, which would involve the construction of 3,400 houses on “Palestinian soil” as part of Israel’s “systemic West Bank annexation”, were due to be issued on 1 June.

The letter called for a UK trade ban on settlements products and services, as well as “suspending trade concessions with Israel for its breach of the human rights provision in the UK-Israel trade and partnership agreement”.

Criticism of the E1 plans by Britain, Germany, France and Italy, “does not deter this Israeli government, grown used over decades to rhetorical condemnation without consequences”, said the letter, whose signatories include Sir David Manning and Sir Peter Westmacott, former ambassadors to the US; Sir David Richmond, the former Foreign Office director general; and Sir Vincent Fean, the former British consul-general to Jerusalem.

Last month Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said Israel’s new West Bank settlement initiative was a “big mistake”, describing it as “annexation moves” and called for a unified European response to the E1 project, which some officials have said poses an “existential threat” to the future of the two-state solution.

Keir Starmer told parliament last month the “Israeli settlements, including the E1 settlement, are a flagrant breach of international law and threaten the viability of a two-state solution”. He added the government recommended “settlement products are labelled so that consumers are informed”, adding: “We will continue to take the necessary action to defend Palestinians and protect the two-state solution.”

The letter calls for Britain to lead the way. “The prime minister agrees with the advice of the international court of justice that the 1967 occupation of Gaza, East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank is ‘unlawful’. Those territories constitute the state of Palestine, which Britain recognised last year with France, Canada, Australia and others,” it said.

“Britain is ideally fitted, both by that decision and its historic responsibilities in the region, to give a lead to like-minded European and Commonwealth partners by: warning now that any bidder for contracts to design, build or finance the E1 settlement endangers their business interests in and with the UK; banning UK trade in goods, services and investment with settlements; and suspending trade concessions with Israel for its breach of the human rights provision in the UK-Israel trade and partnership agreement.”

It added: “The unlawful occupation needs to end peacefully. Without consequences, illegality grows unchecked, and further violence is inevitable.”

The E1 plan, which has been on hold for two decades and has been strongly opposed by the international community, would extend the existing Jewish settlement of Ma’ale Adumim towards Jerusalem, further cutting occupied East Jerusalem from the West Bank, and further separating the north and south of the territory.

Last year Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich –a settler himself, who has backed the plan and the imposition of Israeli sovereignty through the occupied West Bank, said he believed construction on E1 would “bury the idea of a Palestinian state”.