In his statement to Parliament on 8 September 2026, UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced that the UK will ban trade with illegal Israeli settlements, working together with a wider group of countries.

Jane Kinninmont, CEO of UNA-UK, said:

The embargo is long overdue, since Britain and most of the world have long recognised that the settlements are illegal under international law.

The geography of the settlement system has been designed over decades to push Palestinians into smaller cantons, and ultimately to prevent the emergence of a Palestinian state. This system of occupation and de facto annexation is one of the primary reasons for the decades of conflict which have cost the region and the world so much.

Ian Martin, Chair of UNA-UK, had written on 1 September:

Economic sanctions should certainly include but not be limited to a ban on goods and services from and to the illegal settlements. There should be targeted sanctions on Israeli officials linked to war crimes, in line with UK policies on war crimes elsewhere, as well as reviews of visa arrangements and research cooperation.

Only a clear change in policy carries the prospect of some rehabilitation of the UK’s reputation with the global majority of UN member states, who currently see it as having obvious double standards regarding the international law it claims to defend.

The foreign Secretary recognised that attempts to erase Palestinian homes and livelihoods in the West Bank amounts to ethnic cleansing. This is in line with the International Court of Justice’s 2024 advisory opinion, and UNA-UK repeats its call to the UK Government to unequivocally state that it accepts the Court’s ruling.

UNA-UK believes that further steps need to be taken now to implement the settlement trade ban effectively and to sanction organisations that fund and sustain the illegal occupation.

More broadly, UNA-UK has called on consecutive British governments to take necessary steps to uphold their moral and legal obligations. Looking also to the occupation and devastation of Gaza, the UK should ensure a full arms embargo, suspension of the UK-Israel trade agreement while violations continue, full support for international accountability for all those implicated in war crimes, and pressure for humanitarian and media access to Gaza.

Wider work is also needed to build on last year’s recognition of the State of Palestine, and to support the long and arduous work of Palestinian and Israeli civil society, peace and human rights activists who seek to build a pathway out of the conflict, despite the lack of serious bilateral peace talks for most of the past two decades.

See here for a BBC News video on Israel’s response to Miliband’s statement.