Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband disregarded warnings from MI6 that sanctioning Israeli settlements in the West Bank could lead to weakened national security, it has been alleged.
Quoting a Labour source close to the intelligence service, The Spectator reported: “[MI6] presented warnings about the consequences” of the measures, namely around the damage they would cause to the UK’s relationship with Mossad.
Israeli intelligence agency has long provided the UK with information, and helped foil terrorist plots on British soil which, according to former Mossad boss Yossi Cohen, would have led to countless deaths.
The fear now is that Israel will retaliate to sanctions by limiting the information it provides, with people in MI6 “pulling their hair out”, according to the source.
“Everything is conditional and transactional,” the source reportedly said. “If [there is] a real, imminent national security threat, they tell us.”
Another source reportedly suggested that the sanctions would mean the UK is “not going to be taken seriously again” and claimed that Mossad already views MI6 as overcautious.
They went on: “The relationship [is] difficult because we [do] national security; the Israelis do national survival.
“I think the Israelis see us as pretty professional, but a bunch of pussies in terms of the methods that we would use.”
Nonetheless, Miliband announced last week that the UK, and 11 other nations, would be implementing a ban on imports from settlements and sanctioning individuals connected with settler violence.
In his address to the Commons, he accused Israeli authorities of turning a “blind eye” to settler “terrorism” and “ethnic cleansing”.
It has since been reported that the Foreign Office may have gone against official advice from the British embassy in Tel Aviv and National Security Advisor Jonathan Powell, while Miliband similarly disregarded a warning from the Chief Rabbi, who said the measures risked “inflicting real harm” on the British Jewish community.
But the Spectator report also cited concerns within the security establishment over Gulf allies with whom the UK has intelligence-sharing relationships would similarly scale back as the sanctions could limit their access to Mossad intelligence second-hand.
“The Gulfies come to us because they know that we have a good relationship with Israel and they know that basically they’re getting Israeli product,” a security source is reported to have said.
“They can’t get it directly, but they want it, they need it. They’re looking at us going, ‘What the f*** are you doing falling out with them?’.”
Another source added: “Not one of them thinks we have gained influence from [the measures]. They just think we’re increasingly irrelevant.
"The Saudis and Qatar are downgrading their investments in the UK.”
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