Briefed in advance, Trump didn’t ask UK to hold off on announcing settlement sanctions — official

WASHINGTON — 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 tells The Times of Israel.

Burnham held a phone call with Trump earlier 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 says, confirming reporting by the Axios news site.

“There was no request to hold off,” says the Western official briefed on the call.

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 followed by 11 other Western countries — he also 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 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 actual policy on the matter.

The Western official notes that a more forceful US response may still come in the days ahead, even if it does not go as far as Huckabee suggested.