Sanctions on Israel prove mass pressure works. Now ramp it up!

In her debut blog for Labour CND, Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s Deputy Director RYVKA BARNARD celebrates the power of the solidarity movement behind the ‘significant step forward’ recently introduced by the Burnham government. Ryvka reviews the changes in government policy, and outlines what more we need to do.

The British government, under the new leadership of Prime Minister Andy Burnham and his Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, announced on 8 September a wide-ranging set of sanctions and other measures designed to hold Israel to account over its violations of international law and crimes against the Palestinian people. These measures still fall very short of what is needed to ensure freedom and justice for Palestine, but they are a significant step forward.

Without a doubt, the fact that the government has finally advanced some action shows the power of our grassroots solidarity movement and is a tribute to the millions of people who have participated in marches, protests, campaigns and lobbied their elected representatives in support of Palestine over the past three years, if not decades. Now the task of the solidarity movement is to hold the government to its word to make sure the proposed measures are implemented, and push further for comprehensive sanctions on Israel, starting with a two-way arms embargo.

What led up to this moment?

When it became clear that Israel’s attacks in the Gaza Strip were becoming a full-fledged genocide, none of us expected immediate action from the British government. For decades, successive governments have maintained active complicity in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people, no matter how much evidence piled up about Israel’s deepening occupation. Perhaps the most damaging has been the arms trade with Israel that has boosted the apartheid state and given it material support for its violent subjugation of the Palestinian people. These decades of British government support for Israel laid the groundwork for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, so nobody would have expected a sharp reversal when the inevitable unfolded.

Still, even the most cynical amongst use were shocked when then Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that Israel had the right to withhold power and water from Palestinian civilians in Gaza, giving Israel a full-throated green light for its genocidal attacks. Millions in Britain were rightly outraged by the government’s stark support for the sadistic brutality Israel was unleashing against Palestinians, an anger that coalesced into one of the most sustained protest movements in British history.

Last May’s local elections showed that the sentiment in the streets could not be contained there, as voters punished Labour over its shameful support for genocide and voted for other parties in droves. Polling in the weeks following the election showed that nearly three quarters of voters surveyed who switched from Labour to other centre or centre-left parties since the 2024 General Election said their opinion of Labour would improve if the next leader were to adopt a strong position on Palestine, such as imposing sanctions on Israel. That echoed the message that was coming clearly from the hundreds of campaigns across the country and the powerful message from our large national marches calling for sanctions on Israel now. It’s no surprise that one of the first things that Andy Burnham did when taking office was to issue an ‘apology’ over Labour’s positions on Gaza. Not long after, as Israel continued its genocide and increased its horrific violence against Palestinian in the West Bank, the government began trailing an announcement about ‘a comprehensive set of measures’ planned to confront Israel’s illegal conduct, which were finally announced by Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband on 8 September.

What sanctions were introduced?

The new measures introduced by Miliband have been reported mainly as a ban on the import of settlement goods. In and of itself, if successfully implemented, this would be far more than previous governments have done. The details of implementation will be complicated by the nature of Israel’s apartheid regime itself – in which the settlements are completely integrated into the Israeli economy. In practice this means that items grown in settlements are often shipped from and labelled as coming from inside the 1967 borders of Israel. That gives just one example of how difficult it will be to truly insist on a distinction in imports, when no such distinction exists on the export end.

On top of this, the government announced that action will be taken against companies that provide support for settlement expansion, including infrastructure, financial services and more. This additional measure could help cover the lag, if taken seriously, as it potentially opens broad scope for exposing and holding to account the entire settlement enterprise which spans operations in every part of the Israeli economy, but many in the British economy as well. The detail of both of these measures will be complex, but there are dozens of organisations, many of them Palestinian, who have been researching these topics in great detail and with huge expertise. We will push the government to take their lead in designing an implementation plan.

In addition to the focus on settlement trade, perhaps the most significant new measure introduced by Miliband is a commitment to refuse arms export licences for arms and other exports that “materially contribute to the occupation”. This would be on top of the 30 licences previously suspended for items used in Gaza. As with settlement goods, there are real questions and challenges on how this will be implemented, but as a first step, it should be seen as a clear win for the movement, given the centrality of this demand to all of our work over the years. Israel’s use of armed force against Palestinians is the central mechanism through which it upholds occupation and apartheid, and carries out its genocide. Whether that’s through airstrikes in Gaza, or armoured vehicles invading and destroying refugee camps in the West Bank, or the armed police who have carried out blatant assignations of Palestinians in the streets of Jerusalem—Israel’s supply of weaponry is key to maintaining its oppression.

The questions that come out of this new policy are points of pressure that the movement must take forward. The issue remains of the F-35 ‘carve out’, through which the British government continued to contribute to the manufacturing or the F-35 ‘genocide jets’ even during the height of the genocide in Gaza. But beyond this longstanding issue, new questions emerge which will need answers soon. Who will decide what it means for something to “materially contribute to the occupation”? Will the British government rely on Israel’s assurances about how and where it uses weapons, after its end-use guarantees have been flouted repeatedly in the past? What about Israel’s use of weapons beyond its occupation of Palestinian land, for example in its strikes in Iran, Lebanon and beyond? And finally, what about the British military cooperation with Israel in various forms, including its allowance for Elbit Systems, one of Israel’s most prominent arms manufacturers, to operate subsidiary companies on British soil?  

What next for the solidarity movement?

It’s clear from the government’s new policy that there is increased political will in the current government to put words into actions when it comes to British policy towards Israel. In the solidarity movement, we must understand this moment as one to redouble our efforts and refocus our work. As described above, the implementation of what has been announced, and pushing it further, will not flow naturally from the government. If it took three years of the most unspeakable horror of genocide, and all of our organising against it, to get this far, we know that our work is far from over. We will have to work across the labour movement, parliament and in grassroots campaigns to develop new tactics to push the government forward. And without a doubt, we need to maintain that mass pressure in the streets.

Our next march for Palestine will be in Liverpool on 26 September, when we will march to the Labour Party conference to take our message straight to Burnham.
Our next national march in London will be on 10 October, when we will commemorate three years of Israel’s ongoing genocide, and use our sadness, anger and our confidence that mass pressure can create change, to push forward for a full two-way arms embargo on Israel, as the next step towards a free, free Palestine!