The UK will not sanction far-right Israeli ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich despite the expectation that the Labour government would make the move, according to insiders close to the Cabinet.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer previously told MPs that Britain was considering imposing sanctions on the National Security Minister and Finance Minister over comments made by the pair about the situation in Gaza and the West Bank.
Since then, Ben-Gvir sparked further outcry with claims that he has repeatedly foiled a hostage-ceasefire deal over the past year.
Ben-Gvir called on Smotrich to join him in thwarting an emerging ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas to release some of the hostages in Gaza. The pair have previously indicated they would bring down the Israeli government rather than accept a deal that ends the war against Hamas.
In the UK, the duo were on the verge of being sanctioned by the Conservative government last year according to former Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron, who revealed he had been preparing to target Smotrich and Ben-Gvir during his final days in the role.
Asked at Prime Minister’s Questions in October whether those sanctions would be applied, Starmer said: “We are looking at that.”
He also acknowledged that Smotrich and Ben-Gvir had made “abhorrent” comments about the conflict.
Hannah Weisfeld, the director of British Jewish progressive advocacy group Yachad, said she had heard from Labour MPs that the government was close to making a move on sanctions before Donald Trump’s election, but that momentum stalled as Americans went to the polls.
The JC has now learnt that any sanctions on the ministers in Netanyahu’s government are unlikely before Trump is sworn in for a second term as president next week.
“When I was in Westminster, I heard MP after MP tell me that they had had it on senior authority directly from the Foreign Secretary, directly from Number 10, that it was about to happen... Now they won’t comment on it at all and there’s been no action on it,” Weisfeld said.
“If they were going to do it they would have done it before Trump’s inauguration... so there is now no expectation that those sanctions are going to come.”
On October 15, Foreign Secretary David Lammy announced sanctions on individuals and organisations in the West Bank in response to violence by Israeli settlers.
Since Trump’s election last November, the government has not announced any further sanctions despite the PM’s statement in Parliament.
Hundreds of Israelis living in the UK have since urged the Labour government to impose sanctions on the ministers, accusing them of threatening democracy and advocating policies that violate international law.
Signatories on a letter organised by grassroots diaspora group We Democracy called on the PM and Foreign Secretary to target the controversial duo for their efforts to annex the West Bank and resettle Gaza.
The letter demanded the UK “implement sanctions against two extremist Israeli Ministers”, who it accuses of “doing all they can to prevent a hostage and ceasefire deal and instead focusing their entire energies on their messianic aims: annexing the West Bank and settling the Gaza strip”.
Signatories argued that sanctioning the two controversial ministers would “send a clear message that being a true friend of Israel means driving a wedge between the most extreme and harmful elements in Israeli society, and the majority of Israelis who share the same liberal values as the UK.”
It comes after Smotrich threatened to resign from Israel’s governing coalition if the hostage deal, currently in the final stages of negotiation, doesn’t include measures encouraging “voluntary emigration” from Gaza.
