Asked about UK decision to sanction Israeli settlements, Trump says he doesn’t know about it

NEW YORK — Asked for his thoughts on the UK’s decision to outlaw trade with Israeli settlements, US President Donald Trump claims that he is unfamiliar with the decision.

“I don’t know about the [decision]. Do you know about the [decision]?” Trump asks UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham during a bilateral meeting on the UN General Assembly sidelines.

Trump was actually briefed by Burnham before London’s announcement of the sanctions regime targeting Israeli settlements but refrained from pushing back on the initiative, a Western official told The Times of Israel earlier this month.

Asked about the ban two weeks ago, Trump said he planned to speak to Israel and other countries to understand why it was made “all of a sudden.”

Tapped by Trump to explain the decision, Burnham tells reporters that London felt compelled to act after Israel advanced the controversial E1 settlement construction project, which supporters and opponents say will mark the death-knell of a two-state solution.

“If we do nothing, then it further erodes people’s trust in politics,” Burnham says.

The UK premier goes on to stress the UK’s condemnation of Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, leading Trump to pipe in to say that it was a “very strong condemnation.”

While US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has separately clarified that the US will not be joining other Western countries in sanctioning Israeli settlements, Washington has quite notably avoided condemning the move, which infuriated Jerusalem.