Trump, briefed in advance, didn’t ask UK to wait with settlement sanctions — official
Times of Israel · LC · trust 54/100
US President Donald Trump did not push back on British plans to sanction Israeli settlements when he was briefed on the proposal by British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, a Western official told The Times of Israel on Wednesday.
The UK’s Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband on Tuesday announced that Britain, France and Canada would end all dealings with settlements, denounced the “unlawful occupation” of the West Bank, and accused “settler terrorists” of “ethnic cleansing,” indulged or supported by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Burnham held a phone call with Trump this week during which he informed the US president of London’s plan to ban the import of goods from the settlements, along with a host of other measures aimed at countering expansionist Israeli policy in the West Bank, the Western official said, confirming reporting by the Axios news site.
“There was no request to hold off,” the Western official briefed on the call said.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio hinted at the lack of opposition from Washington when asked about the British sanctions on Tuesday.
While Rubio noted that the US would not join the UK in the move — which was also backed by 11 other Western countries — he avoided criticizing it.
“We were made aware that they are gonna make this decision. We heard their arguments as to why. We share the goal of stability. We don’t want to see an uptick in violence or tensions in the West Bank in a tenuous time in the region,” the top US diplomat said.
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee — a longtime backer of the settlement movement — offered very different comments earlier in the day, which indicated that Washington was going to punish London over the sanctions package.
“If the Brits go and put some kind of boycott and sanctions on them, the repercussions are going to be significant,” Huckabee told the BBC.
But a White House official later told Axios that Huckabee’s comments were not coordinated with the White House or the State Department, suggesting that they did not represent the administration’s policy on the matter.
The Western official who spoke to The Times of Israel noted that a more forceful US response may still come in the days ahead, even if it does not go as far as Huckabee suggested.
Huckabee has also slammed extremist violence in the West Bank, calling settlers who have besieged the Palestinian village of Qusra “Israeli terrorists,” but said they represent only a small minority of the settler community.
The West Bank has seen near-daily incidents of settler violence and harassment in recent months. Arrests are rare, and critics have accused the government of condoning or even encouraging the attacks.
In response to the sanctions, Israel has told the British consulate in East Jerusalem, which is accredited to the Palestinian Authority, that it must close and that diplomats assigned there will lose their accreditation within 30 days, an Israeli official and two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Wednesday.
British representatives assigned to a US-led Gaza coordination mission in Israel, as well as British diplomats based in Ramallah, must leave within seven days, the two sources said.
Miliband on Wednesday condemned the decision in an interview with BBC Radio, and rejected suggestions that the sanctions would impact intelligence cooperation with Israel.
“We anticipated this might happen because we saw other countries, the Dutch, for example, who had announced sanctions, who had seen these reprisals from Israel. I think they’re regrettable and damaging,” Miliband said.
“We have important intelligence and security relationships with Israel, and I’m confident they will continue,” he said, declining to go into details.
“And I was very clear yesterday that we do believe in working with our Israeli partners when it comes to the threats they face from Iran,” he added.
Miliband also dismissed the criticism of the sanctions by Britain’s chief rabbi.
Ephraim Mirvis on Tuesday called the measures “little more than political flag-bearing.”
He said it was “truly a dark day for British Jews,” predicting that the measures “will succeed only in bolstering the very extremism they seek to target.”
Several antisemitic attacks in London this year have targeted synagogues and other Jewish sites.
Announcing the sanctions regime on Tuesday, Miliband said London would impose an import ban on goods from settlements in the West Bank, sanction companies and individuals that facilitate settlement expansion, and refuse licenses for arms and other exports deemed to materially support Israel’s “occupation.”
He said the British government had agreed that there is “ethnic cleansing of Palestinian in areas of the West Bank — perpetrated by settler terrorists,” and charged that “the Israeli government has turned a blind eye to this and, worse, members of it have made statements and taken actions to support the forced displacement of Palestinians.”
In a difficult and dangerous world, a decade on from Brexit, there is a risk that Britain loses the confidence to lead and stand up for its values.
I’m not prepared to let that happen. It is more important than ever that Britain stands for something.
— Andy Burnham (@andyburnham) September 8, 2026
In his first public statement on the moves on Tuesday, Burnham said on X that “it is more important than ever that Britain stands for something.” “We have called for years for a two-state solution in the Middle East, but we must recognize that those words are meaningless unless we back them up with action,” he wrote. “For too long, we have been hesitant to act, fearful of being accused of being anti-Israel.”
Burnham asserted the “carefully judged, targeted steps that are not aimed at the Israeli people, but at the unacceptable policies of the current Israeli government,” while adding that he “will not stand by as the horrific suffering continues to grow and the prospect of a two-state solution —…
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