This week, alongside partners Canada, France and Norway, the UK government announced expanded sanctions against 6 entities and one individual enabling settler violence in the occupied West Bank. The government has also strengthened its business risk guidance to make clear that British citizens and businesses should not conduct any economic or financial activities in Israel’s illegal settlements.

As noted by Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Calum Miller in Parliament on Tuesday, the new measures – though welcome – are extremely overdue, with the Dutch Government having issued a similar discouragement notice 20 years ago. Moreover, the notice remains purely advisory and carries no penalty for non-compliance, falling woefully short of a comprehensive ban on all trade with Israeli settlements.

The limitations of that approach are obvious. This weekend, the “Great Israeli Real Estate Event” is due to take place in London, an international roadshow that openly advertises the sale of land in West Bank settlements. If ministers genuinely believe British citizens and businesses should not engage in settlement-related activity, then allowing stolen Palestinian land to be marketed in our capital just days after issuing new guidance against settlement trade makes a mockery of that position.

Settler violence – often carried out with the support and even participation of Israeli soldiers – has soared since October 2023. At the same time, Israel has introduced a raft of new measures to accelerate its de facto annexation of the occupied  territory, while recently inviting bids for tenders for the E1 development, a strategic plan for around 3,500 homes that if implemented would sever the West Bank in two and destroy any possibility of a future contiguous Palestinian state. That is its purpose.

In that context, targeted sanctions on select individuals and entities, while not nothing, are insufficient. The UK must adopt measures that recognise the state-backed nature of the settlement enterprise and exert meaningful pressure on the Israeli government to change course. Banning settlement trade would be entirely consistent with the UK’s longstanding position that Israeli settlements are illegal under international law. It would also help fulfil the country’s obligations under the ICJ’s July 2024 advisory opinion, which reaffirmed that states must not recognise or assist the illegal occupation, including through economic or trade relations.

The Liberal Democrats have long called for a ban on all trade in goods and services with the settlements. More than 140 Labour MPs recently  wrote to Yvette Cooper calling for a ban, and analysis by the Council for Arab-British Understanding suggests that at least 238 MPs from across the political spectrum have now publicly backed this.

Support for stronger action is also growing beyond traditional pro-Palestinian advocacy groups. In a statement responding to yesterday’s announcement, the British Jewish organisation Yachad described settler violence as “a daily and systemic method of making life impossible for Palestinians” and warned that settler leaders and members of the Israeli government have made their objective increasingly clear: “displacement, occupation and annexation.”  The statement concludes that the international community has a duty to do “whatever it can” to stop this, and urges the UK to consider further measures, including a settlement trade ban.

Yachad is exactly the kind of organisation that Liberal Democrats should be collaborating with in our efforts to push the government further on this issue. A mainstream organisation but one focused on empowering British Jews to support a political resolution to the conflict, their work reflects a fundamentally liberal approach: mobilising liberal voices across communities, challenging extremism, and working towards a genuine and lasting peace grounded in a two-state solution and firmly rooted in international law.

Yachad’s intervention is also an important reminder that opposing settlement expansion is not anti-Israel. On the contrary, many of those calling for tougher action do so because they recognise that years of impunity have only strengthened the extremists within Israel while marginalising liberal voices and undermining prospects for genuine peace. From this perspective, ending the occupation is not contrary to Israel’s national interests but essential to preserving any hope of a secure and prosperous Israel living alongside a sovereign Palestinian state.

The growing support for a settlement trade ban – from Liberal Democrats and Labour MPs to British Jewish organisations committed to a political resolution – demonstrates that this is not a fringe position, but an increasingly mainstream response to a rapidly deteriorating reality on the ground.

Ultimately, the question now facing the UK government is whether it is prepared to match its words with action. Ministers have repeatedly stated that the settlements are illegal, that settler violence is intolerable, and that annexation threatens the prospects for a two-state solution. If those positions are to mean anything, they must be accompanied by policies capable of imposing real costs on those contributing to these abuses. Anything less risks signalling that, while Britain opposes the occupation in principle, it remains unwilling to confront it in practice.

* Jonathan Brown is a member of the Chichester Liberal Democrats, is Vice Chair of the Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine and Chairs the Liberal Democrats for Free Syria.