With the British government set to announce new measures targeting Israel’s settlement project, polling by Opinium for ECFR shows that just 18% of UK adults oppose a ban on trade in goods with Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, compared to 46% who back it. Support rises to nearly three quarters—72% versus 28%—when excluding those who did not voice an opinion.
To date, the UK has sanctioned some two dozen organisations and individuals linked to settler violence. It has also excluded settlement goods from the preferential trade tariffs applied to Israeli products, though stopped short of an outright ban. However, settlement expansion is a state-driven project sustained by domestic economic incentives and foreign financial linkages. Rather than focusing only on its most violent manifestation, a settlement trade ban would challenge these underlying drivers.
Last week, foreign secretary Ed Miliband pledged to go further in challenging Israeli actions that are destroying the possibility of a two-state solution, like the recent construction of the “doomsday” E-1 settlement on the outskirts of East Jerusalem. The settlement ban expected to be announced later today also gives practical meaning to the UK’s recognition of Palestine last year—as demanded by Palestinians themselves. Such action by the British government commands broad support across Britain’s political and regional divides, while opposition is limited.
Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green voters decisively favour the proposed ban. It is also strongly supported by voters who have moved away from Labour, many of whom defected to the Green Party amid dissatisfaction with prime minister Keir Starmer’s response to Israeli actions in Gaza and the West Bank. But backing for the measure extends across party lines: Conservative and Reform voters are also more likely to support than oppose it.
The findings cross the Brexit divide too, with supporters clearly outnumbering opponents among both Remain and Leave voters. The same pattern is evident geographically. Support is highest in London and Scotland, closely followed by Northern Ireland, while supporters also outnumber opponents in every English region and in Wales. Indeed, across every political, regional, age and gender group reported in the survey, support exceeds opposition.
The polling also finds that only 16% of British adults consider it antisemitic to target Israeli settlements. Meanwhile, a two-state solution remains by far the most popular outcome for Israel and Palestine with 40% favouring a Palestinian state alongside Israel, compared with 12% who favour a single shared state and just 8% who prefer the status quo of Israel without a Palestinian state.
ECFR’s polling shows a clear public mandate for the UK to take a leadership role in strengthening international efforts against Israel’s settlement project
ECFR’s polling shows a clear public mandate for the UK to take a leadership role in strengthening international efforts against Israel’s settlement project and to defend the viability of a two-state solution. This would build on similar moves by Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands and Spain in recent months.
The results also suggest the UK government has the public support to go further: extend the ban to investment and financial services, exclude settlements from all UK agreements with Israel (including the convention for the avoidance of double taxation) and prohibit all British business dealings with settlements (including the purchase of settlement real estate). This should go hand-in-hand with additional sanctions targeting organisations that play an instrumental role in funding and sustaining Israel’s settlement project, such as Ateret Cohanim, the Jewish National Fund’s Himnuta real-estate subsidiary, and the Settlement Division of the World Zionist Organization.
At the heart of the new UK government’s policy reset should be a collective push with its Western partners to finally implement the International Court of Justice’s 2024 advisory opinion on Israel’s occupation. The court underscored the duty of states to “take steps to prevent trade or investment relations that assist in the maintenance of the illegal situation created by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”. To uphold this approach would also help give effect to the 2016 UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which calls on states to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between Israel and the Palestinian territories it has occupied since 1967.
A settlement trade ban should mark the beginning of a more consequential British policy towards Israeli settlements. The polling shows that British public opinion is supportive. Having recognised Palestine in principle, the UK must now use its economic weight and diplomatic leadership to preserve it in practice.