UK-Israeli relations have plunged to their worst state for decades after the British foreign secretary, David Lammy, suspended negotiations over a new free trade deal, saying Israel’s cabinet ministers’ calls to “purify Gaza” by expelling Palestinians were repellent, monstrous and extremist.
He also said wider talks about a future bilateral strategic roadmap with Israel were being reviewed.
Lammy condemned Israel’s refusal to allow thousands of aid trucks access to starving Palestinians and said Israel’s treatment of Palestinians was “an affront to the values of the British people” and “incompatible with the principles that underpin the UK-Israeli bilateral relationship”.
At the same time, EU foreign ministers, meeting in Brussels, decided to review the bloc’s trade agreement with Israel after a request from the Dutch foreign minister, Caspar Veldkamp. Seventeen of the 27 states backed the move. The EU is Israel’s biggest trading partner, accounting for 32% of Israel’s total trade in goods in 2024.
Lammy, unleashing language he has not used since the latest Gaza conflict began, said the further planned major military incursion into Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces was “morally unjustifiable, wholly disproportionate and utterly counterproductive”.
As the foreign secretary made his opening remarks in the Commons, backbenchers shouted “genocide”.
Sounding genuinely outraged with the government of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Lammy said: “We are now entering a dark new phase in this conflict. Netanyahu’s government is planning to drive Gazans from their homes into a corner of the strip to the south and permit them a fraction of the aid that they need.”
Israel’s foreign ministry accused the UK of having an anti-Israel obsession.
Responding to the suspension of trade talks, the Israeli foreign ministry spokesperson Oren Marmorstein said: “If, due to anti-Israel obsession and domestic political considerations, the British government is willing to harm the British economy – that is its own prerogative.”
He said the sanctions in relation to the West Bank were “unjustified and regrettable”. And he added: “The British mandate ended exactly 77 years ago.
“External pressure will not divert Israel from its path in defending its existence and security against enemies who seek its destruction.”
Lammy told MPs: “Yesterday, minister [Bezalel] Smotrich even spoke of Israeli forces ‘cleansing’ Gaza, ‘destroying what’s left’, of resident Palestinians ‘being relocated to third countries’. We must call this what it is. It is extremism. It is dangerous. It is repellent. It is monstrous.”
He added that the Israeli ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, was being summoned to hear British demands that the latest assault on Gaza be halted.
Lammy said Israel had suffered a “heinous attack” on 7 October 2023 and that the UK government backed Israel’s right to defend itself.
But the military escalation in Gaza was “morally unjustifiable, it’s wholly disproportionate, it’s utterly, utterly counterproductive – whatever Israeli ministers claim, this is not the way to bring the hostages safely home”.
Israel has held back aid, saying it was being stolen by Hamas and claimed the renewed assault was necessary to wipe out the terrorists and release the remaining hostages.
But Lammy said Israel would not secure the release of the hostages by creating a humanitarian catastrophe. He said: “Civilians in Gaza facing starvation, homelessness, trauma, desperate for this war to end, now confront renewed bombardment, new displacement and new suffering. And the remaining hostages kept apart from their loved ones by Hamas for almost 600 days are now at heightened risk from the war around them.
“They are going to take control of the strip and will allow just enough to prevent hunger. Fewer than 10 trucks entered Gaza yesterday. The UN and WHO have issued stark warnings of the threat of starvation hanging over the heads of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. This is abominable.”
He warned that the Israeli government was damaging the country’s global reputation. “They are isolating Israel from its friends and partners around the world. Undermining the interests of the Israeli people. And damaging the image of the state of Israel in the eyes of the world. I find this deeply painful, as a lifelong friend of Israel and a believer in the values expressed in its declaration of independence.”
But many Labour backbenchers in the Commons found a gulf between Lammy’s rhetoric and the government’s actions limited to a symbolic suspending of talks on a free trade deal.
Backbenchers including many Tories called for a tightening of controls of UK arms exports to Israel, recognition of the state of Palestine at a UN conference next month and a full ban on Israeli trade. Lammy said further concrete action would be considered but in conjunction with allies.
The Conservative former minister Kit Malthouse said Lammy’s “anger and the outrage” was “appreciated by us all”, but added: “He knows as well as I do that the Israelis couldn’t give a damn what he says in this chamber.” He added: “Does the frontbench need us to beg for the lives of those Palestinian children before they’ll trigger this concrete action, whatever it might be?”
Lammy said it was “wrong” of Malthouse to claim that “Israelis couldn’t give a fig what [was] said from this frontbench”, adding that the government announced further sanctions “because of the position of this Netanyahu government and the language that we see from these ministers”.
He also imposed sanctions on a further three Israeli settlers and four entities on the West Bank, including the veteran settler extremist Daniella Weiss, the head of the Nachala movement, who featured in Louis Theroux’s recent documentary, The Settlers. Other individuals targeted were Zohar Sabah, an Israeli who the US imposed sanctions on in November. It was from the Zohar Zabah farm that settlers, some of them minors, set out to attack the principal of a Palestinian school in the grounds of the school.
When contacted by phone, Weiss shrugged off the sanctions, which she attacked as “childish” and claimed they would not affect her personally or the broader settler movement.
“My husband ordered tickets already for an around the world tour, without including Britain,” she said.
“It is not mature, it is not serious. If it were a child doing it I could say that the child doesn’t understand.
“Britain knows, the [British] government knows, that we were attacked, and if it were up to the Israeli government we wouldn’t have started any war.
“But as we were attacked and as there are intentions to continue attacks, so we fight. And we will have the upper hand.”
However, Lammy again held back from imposing sanctions on two Israeli cabinet ministers, the finance minister, Smotrich, and the interior minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, although he said some of their language would be kept under review.
Smotrich said this week: “Just as we levelled Rafah, we will level all of Gaza.”
Lammy said there was a UN plan ready to deliver aid at scale with more than 9,000 trucks at the border. He called on Netanyahu to immediately end the blockade and allow aid in.
Sanctions were also imposed on Libi Construction and Infrastructure Ltd, Harel Libi and Coco’s Farm Outpost, and Neria’s Farm Outpost, including “persons residing in the outpost, for involvement in human rights abuses”. Earlier Keir Starmer said Britain “cannot allow the people of Gaza to starve” and that levels of suffering there were “utterly intolerable”.
“The recent announcement that Israel will allow a basic quantity of food into Gaza is totally and utterly inadequate,” he told MPs.
“So we must coordinate our response, because this war has gone on for far too long. We cannot allow the people of Gaza to starve.”
