Emily Thornberry, chair of the British Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee and a Labour Party MP, has urged the UK government to ban imports produced in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. The call was reported on August 23, 2026. Thornberry said individual sanctions alone were insufficient to halt settlement expansion and violence, arguing that trade with the settlements should also stop.

She said Israeli settlement construction and expansion in the West Bank were threatening the prospects for a two-state solution. Thornberry argued that Britain should stop importing settlement goods so that British money is not used to support the expansion of those settlements. She also described violence by Israeli settlers in the West Bank as having reached a severe level.

Nearly 140 Labour MPs called in June for a ban on trade with what they described as illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, but the British government has not introduced a full prohibition. The government has described Israeli settlements as a violation of international law. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband recently strongly criticised Israel’s new West Bank settlement projects, and the government said further measures to curb settlement expansion would be announced in coming weeks.