Prominent Israelis welcome UK sanctions

Prominent Israelis have welcomed new UK sanctions as a necessary response to settlement expansion and spiraling violence in the occupied West Bank, reports The Guardian.

The intervention was described – by the president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, a former prime minister, an ex-head of the army and former ministers and diplomats – as an “inevitable consequence” of Israeli government and security failures.

“Sanctions [are being imposed] against Jewish terrorists, and not against the legitimacy of the state of Israel,” they wrote in a joint statement. “There is no basis to the [Israeli] government’s response that the decision to impose sanctions against Jewish terrorists is an expression of antisemitism.”

Ed Miliband, the foreign secretary, had indicated Britain was planning new sanctions, but the strength of his language and the scale of the controls he announced on were a surprise.