LONDON (VINnews) — Britain’s Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis told Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband on Friday that the U.K. government’s planned sanctions over Israeli construction in the West Bank’s E1 area would be counterproductive, risk a broader boycott of Israel and inflict harm on both the region and British Jews.
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Mirvis said he welcomed the meeting and that the two men share hopes for peace and security in the Middle East. He argued, however, that the intended measures would not change Israeli policy as the government expects and instead “risk inflicting real harm across the region.”
“Given the obvious challenges of defining and implementing such measures, there is a clear danger that they will spiral into a de facto boycott of trade with Israel more broadly, damaging the long-term relationship between our two countries and threatening the livelihoods of tens of thousands of Palestinian workers,” Mirvis wrote Sunday on X after the meeting.
The chief rabbi said many in the U.K. Jewish community would view the sanctions “with deep dismay” at a time when “the vilification of Jews, Judaism and the Jewish State has already reached unprecedented levels.” He added that the policy would disproportionately affect British Jews because of their religious, family, charitable and educational ties to Israel.
“Over recent years, we have seen repeatedly that when rhetoric towards Israel escalates, hostility towards Jews is never far behind,” he said.
Mirvis strongly condemned “the reprehensible violence perpetrated against Palestinians by a small number of extremists.” He said the government’s proposals would “only embolden the tiny minority who support such criminality, while penalising countless others who abhor it.”
The government has cited Israel’s tender for homes in E1, between Jerusalem and the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, as the justification. Foreign Secretary Miliband last week called the tender “an unacceptable and destructive act” that he said threatened the viability of a two-state solution and announced that London would set out “a comprehensive set of measures,” including targeted sanctions on those involved in settlement expansion.
Mirvis noted that successive peace efforts, from Oslo to Camp David and beyond, had envisaged a final agreement in which the E1 area would remain under Israeli sovereignty.
“It is therefore difficult to escape the painful conclusion that domestic political considerations are driving foreign policy, the impact of which is negative both for prospects for peace in the Middle East and for the UK Jewish community,” he said.
The two men posed for a photograph at the meeting, which Mirvis’s office released Sunday.
The UK Was the inventors of occupying territories thousands of miles of their borders, for the longest period, but now they have an issue of Jewish people trying to rebuild their historical homeland, what a bunch of hypocrites
Yea Oslo was definitely an effort that paid off
And just wait for the backlash if Israel responds, as it signaled it will and should, by kicking the Brits out of the Gaza hub as they did the Dutch. FAFO.
Chief Rabbi Mirvis is right to highlight the dangers here. Sanctions rarely achieve their stated goals, but they often have unintended consequences. When governments target Israel, it frequently fuels antisemitism and impacts the livelihoods of many, including Palestinians. This kind of foreign policy, driven by domestic political maneuvering rather than real strategic understanding, harms everyone.