Emily Thornberry, chair of the U.K. Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee and a Labour MP, has called on the British government to ban the import of goods produced in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. She said individual sanctions alone are not enough to stop Israeli settlement expansion and violence there; trade with the settlements needs to be halted as well.
Thornberry said the prospects for a two-state solution have come under threat because of the establishment and expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. To ensure British money is not used to fund the expansion of these settlements, she said, imports of goods from the settlements need to be stopped.
She further said violence by Israeli settlers in the West Bank has now reached a horrifying level. Halting trade with the settlements in this situation, she said, could help build pressure on the Israeli government.
In June, about 140 Labour MPs had called for a ban on trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The British government, however, has not yet implemented any such full ban.
The British government has, however, described the Israeli settlements as a violation of international law. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband recently sharply criticized Israel’s new settlement project in the West Bank as well. The government has said further measures to prevent settlement expansion will be announced in the coming weeks.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report