Settlements are neither inherently illegal – nor the real obstacle to peace

She has also amended business risk guidance, warning British citizens and companies that they “should not conduct any economic and financial activities in illegal Israeli settlements”, a category that presumably includes the Jewish quarter in Jerusalem’s Old City, where Jews have lived continuously for centuries until they were ethnically cleansed in 1948 by the Jordanian army. When the Jews returned to their ancient neighbourhood after the Six Day War in 1967, they suddenly became “illegal settlers”. This must be that famous British sense of fairness and justice.

Cooper boasted in the Commons that this was “the fourth package of sanctions under this Labour government against extremist Israeli settlers”.

They had to go halfway around the world, but Labour finally found an extremism problem they are prepared to face up to.

Let’s unpick some of this hysteria.

Jewish settlement in the West Bank, or, to use its decolonised name Judea and Samaria, as such is not extreme or shameful or worthy of sanction. These areas are the very heart of Eretz Yisrael, the cradle of Jewish civilisation, places where Jewish life, worship, custom and self-determination can be traced back more than three millennia and there are substantial arguments in international law supporting Israeli sovereignty over the territory.

Never shy away from making the political, historical, legal and moral arguments for Israeli rights in these areas – even if you believe, as I do, that formalising that sovereignty in Palestinian population centres would be strategically foolhardy and democratically impermissible.

Fight anti-Zionism as if there was no settler violence, and fight settler violence as if there was no antizionism.

But do not delude yourself that surrendering Israel’s claim to the West Bank will bolster her standing in the eyes of her detractors. Some already oppose the existence of any Jewish state and more will voice that position as it becomes socially acceptable to do so.

Liberal Zionists and antizionists both see the settlements as an issue of moral legitimacy. But while the former fret about their impact on Jewish conscience and Israeli democracy, the latter understand that delegitimising Jewish presence in Revava is the first step to delegitimising Jewish presence in Rehovot. Anyone who doubts this lives in a worldview called October 6, 2023.

The settlements are an easy target for Israel’s enemies because everyone, from Israel’s implacable foes to her professed friends, agrees that settlements stand in the way of a two-state solution.

Well, as the meme goes, never ask a woman her age, a man his salary, or a two-stater why the mere presence of Jews in the West Bank would be an obstacle to peace.

It can’t be because the Palestinians, most governments, and all the NGOs consider the settlements illegal. The Palestinians are also building in the West Bank in contravention of the Oslo Accords, legally binding agreements under international law, which the EU signed as a witness. The UK, then an EU member, was therefore party to that commitment. Irregular construction is either an obstacle to peace or it’s not; it can’t be an obstacle only when one side does it.

Nor can it be because settlements take away land from a future Palestinian state. Israel has surrendered vast swathes of captured territory over the years, whether in the Sinai, the cities of the West Bank, or the land-for-peace success story that is Gaza.

And the vast majority of Jews in the West Bank live anyway in settlements or neighbourhoods of Jerusalem that would remain Israeli under any conceivable peace deal.

But why would the presence of Israeli Jews even outside these settlement blocks and Jerusalem neighbourhoods stand in the way of Palestinian statehood? After all, Israel is home to roughly two million Palestinian and other Arabs, roughly 21 per cent of the population, all of whom enjoy citizenship and equal rights.

The future, no doubt democratic State of Palestine, could just do the same as Israel, right?

This is the dirty little secret of the two-state solution, one in which not only Israel’s enemies but a lamentable number of her allies collude.

There can be no Israeli Jewish minority in a State of Palestine because the Palestinians refuse to consider it, and their leaders have repeatedly made this abundantly clear.

The reason all the settlements and all the settlers must go is because the Palestinians are not content to have a state unless it first had all its Israeli Jewish residents expelled. There is a term for the uprooting of a racial or religious group from a territory but it’s not “peacemaking”.

This is usually the point where Zionists complain about double standards and ask why economic activity with Israeli settlements is discouraged but not dealings with, say, Turkish settlements in northern Cyprus, or, for that matter, British citizens buying homes there, easily searchable on popular British property sites.

Instead of kvetching about the injustice of it all, we should learn to play our foes at their own game.

As such, we are indebted to Melanie Ward for raising awareness about the ethics of charitable giving in the Middle East, and her pioneering focus on Israeli settlements provides foundations upon which we can build.

For just as no one wants Gift Aid to benefit Israeli settler organisations, surely no one wants British charities to be giving money to Palestinian organisations that reject living in peace with Israel or refuse to oppose antisemitism.

To that end, a government that applies its moral standards and interpretation of international law consistently – as this Labour government would no doubt insist it does – ought to prohibit British NGOs from funding Palestinian entities which do not recognise Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and have not adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism.

If Israelis living over the Green Line pose an obstacle to peace, Palestinians who refuse to accept Israelis living on either side of the Green Line also stand in the way of peace. If we’re going to say no British cash for extremists it must apply to extremists on both sides.

For the pro-Palestinian movement, the prospect of having their tactics turned against them will be unsettling to say the least.

Stephen Daisley is a columnist for the Scottish Daily Mail and a regular contributor to The Spectator