Settler groups denounce UK trade ban on settlements, but Israeli peace groups welcome step

Yisrael Ganz, chairman of the Yesha Council umbrella settlement organization, calls the ban imposed by the UK on products from Israel’s West Bank settlements “antisemitic” and “a moral disgrace.”

Ganz, who also heads the Binyamin Regional Council municipal authority for settlements in the central West Bank, claims that the Palestinian Authority has promoted such trade bans and says financial harm to Israel resulting from the move should be seized from Palestinian funds.

“Britain’s decision to boycott products from Judea and Samaria and impose sanctions on Jews simply because they live and work in parts of their homeland is a disgraceful antisemitic step,” says Ganz.

“Our message to Britain and anyone joining the boycott is clear: You will not succeed in driving the Jews out of Judea and Samaria. We will respond to every attempt to harm the settlements with more construction, more communities, and greater Israeli sovereignty.”

Settlement regional councils like the Binyamin Regional Council have helped coordinate the establishment of dozens of illegal settlement outposts that have mushroomed across the West Bank in the four-year term of the outgoing government.

Guy Yifrach, mayor of the major Maale Adumim city-settlement, calls on Israelis to support settlement businesses in response to the UK trade boycott, and announces that 60 new factories are nearing completion in the Mishor Adumim industrial zone.

“In the face of every effort to close markets to us, we will work to open new markets for local industry,” says Yifrach.

Israeli civil rights groups welcome the settlements trade ban, however.

Peace Now says the settlements “endanger the future of the State of Israel,” adding that it “is good that Britain and other countries make the necessary distinction between sovereign Israel and the settlement and outpost enterprise beyond the green line and are acting against annexation and settler terrorism.”

The organization says sanctions against the settlements do not equal sanctions against Israel, and adds that if the government continues with the E1 settlement construction project between Maale Adumim and Jerusalem and its efforts to undermine a two-state solution with the Palestinians, “it will deepen Israel’s isolation and the harm to it, its economy, and its global standing.”

The Looking the Occupation in the Eye organization, which works to combat settler violence, says the trade ban shows that the UK and other countries have noticed that the Israeli government “has no intention of eradicating settler terrorism,” and approves the boycott of what it calls “produce rooted in the theft of land, homes, and human lives.”