Sir Keir Starmer has condemned Israeli settlements in the West Bank as a “flagrant breach of international law” and backed the labelling of products imported from them to the UK.
At Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, Starmer was asked about the topic by Debbie Abrahams, the chair of the Work and Pensions Select Committee and Labour MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth.
Abrahams highlighted the planned expansion of the E1 settlement, east of Jerusalem, saying: “Will he confirm, as he said he would, that any potential bidder for E1 contracts from the UK knows that this is unlawful, and will he set out exactly what will happen as a consequence?”
The E1 expansion plan, backed by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, will link the existing settlement of Ma’ale Adumim to East Jerusalem through the building of 3,000 new homes.
The opposition to construction in the area is primarily due to the fact that connecting Jerusalem with Ma'ale Adumim would divide the northern and southern parts of the West Bank.
This would make it impractical to connect East Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Ramallah, which are all under Palestinian control, a move some see as the basis for a contiguous Palestinian state.
Starmer responded by saying: “Israeli settlements, including the E1 settlement, are a flagrant breach of international law and threaten the viability of the two-state solution.”
Hinting at measures he’d brought in against Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, he added that both the UK and its international partners had brought sanctions against supporters of the settlement movement “who incite violence”.
He went on: “We consistently urge the Israeli government to act to stop these incidents. We also recommend that settlement products are labelled so that consumers are informed and will continue to take the necessary action to defend Palestinians and protect the two-state solution.”
Israel’s then-ambassador to the UK was summoned by the Foreign Office in July last year after the Israeli government announced approval for the new construction in the E1 zone.
“The UK and 21 international partners have written to condemn this decision in the strongest terms. If implemented, these settlement plans would be a flagrant breach of international law and would divide a future Palestinian state in two, critically undermining a two-state solution”, a departmental spokesperson said at the time.
Starmer opened PMQs by condemning Monday’s attack on Hatzolah ambulances in Golders Green, saying that “an attack on Britain’s Jewish community is an attack on all of us” and confirming that the volunteer service had been loaned vehicles from the London Ambulance Service while the government purchased permanent replacements.
Elsewhere during the session, the prime minister was urged to proscribe Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the wake of the attack after police confirmed they were investigating a possible link to Iranian state actors.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said he wanted to associate himself with Starmer’s remarks “about Monday's despicable attacks on the Jewish community”.
He continued: “Antisemitism has no place in our society and, given the potential links with the IRGC, I hope the government will move faster to proscribe them as terrorists.”
Similarly, former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith said the IRGC, in the UK and across the world, was responsible “for the rise of antisemitism, inciting extreme Islam[ic] attacks, and at the same time attacking dissident Iranians and British citizens, as well as fermenting all sorts of hate marches”.
The MP for Chingford and Woodford Green continued: “We are now at war with Iran, whether we like it or not. But the reality for us, therefore, is that we have never dealt with this organisation.
"And I simply ask the prime minister… can he make the decision now that they will proscribe this brutal bunch of thugs and send them packing, or arrest them and put them in jail now, right now, get rid of this organisation?”
Starmer responded that the government had “sanctioned the IRGC in its entirety” and imposed 230 sanctions since coming into office.
“The existing prescription powers are not designed for a state organisation, but we do keep this under review, as did the last government”, he added.
In opposition, Labour called for the IRGC to be proscribed, but has yet to do so in government.
Last May, Jonathan Hall KC, the government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, advised ministers to create the ability to “issue statutory alert and liability threat notices against foreign intelligence services, an equivalent to proscription under the Terrorism Act 2000”, which he said would be “available for use against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps”.
The government is yet to announce plans to bring forward Hall’s proposals into law, but on Tuesday, Dan Jarvis, the security minister, said they would look to do so “as soon as we can”.
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