The leaders of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium and the EU have issued a joint statement on Israel’s ethnic cleaning campaign in the West Bank. You can read it here. A few token steps have been taken. The facist Defence Minister Ben-Gvir has been banned from France. A few of the most violent settlers recently had travel and asset bans imposed on them by the EU, though according to the BBC they hadn’t actually been imposed by 11 May due to more technical and legal work being required. [1] The UK sanctioned a few in 2024. [2] Obviously this makes no difference, which is why they do it.
Israel has just slaughted more than 70, 000 people in Gaza including 20,000 children up to September 25. [3] The assault continues. Currently they are killing policeman in order to prevent the development of any kind of a coherent civil society in Gaza. In the murderous attack on 7 October 2023 by Hamas 38 children were killed. [4] I say that for context, not because I think it is some kind of a numbers game. Multiple reputable NGOs call what Israel is doing in Gaza a genocide. A UN Commission has called it a genocide. Whether it technically meets that bar, or not, it is clealy a massive campaign against a people. Starvation and forcible displacement have, and are, being used against a civlian population.
The reason so many civilians are killed by Israel, in Gaza, or in Lebanon, is because they accept massive civilian casulaties when they target people conneected to the groups which oppose them. At one point it was reported that they were killing 15 civilians in Gaza for every militant. [6] (And, some of those ‘militants’ may have had only tenuous connections to armed groups).
In the West Bank the state organised campaign of ethnic cleansing continues apace. In March 2025 Israeli NGO B’Tselem said that killing children had become routine in the West Bank. [5] In November 2024 Israel was killing one child every 2 days. [7] Children are often killed for throwing stones at armoured vehicles. This is policy. Violent, often armed, settlers frequently attack Palestinian communities, destroy their crops, or steal their livestock. The army supports them. There are reliable reports about such events all the time on Al-Jazeeera, sometimes in UK press like the Guardian. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank is illegal under various UN Resolutions and is regarded as an obstacle to the two-state solution. Yet, it continues apace – not led by freelance groups of uncontrollable settlers, but by the government of Israel, at the highest level. Consider, for example the statement of finance Minister Smotrich that plans for a new settlement will “bury the idea of a Palestinian state”. [8] Meanwhile the Prime Minister of the country openly repudiates the two-state solution. Indeed he does so on fundamentalist grounds which, apparently supercede UN Resolutions, for example, “The Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land — not in our eternal capital Jerusalem, not in the land of our ancestors in Judea and Samaria. No false decision in The Hague [the ICJ ruling in 2024 confirming the West Bank is illegally occupied [9]] will distort this historical truth, just as the legality of Israeli settlement in all the territories of our homeland cannot be contested. ” [10]
These actions, which carry on without pause, (agreed ceaseefires are routinely violated by Israel and have been for years, for example the ceeasefire at the end of the 2006 Lebonon war) [11] seem to be driven by a belief that killing as many of your enemies as possible, and destroying their ability to have a society, is the way by which Israel will be secure in the land it alreaady occupies and will enable them to take more. Possibly – but at a cost of total and permanent war.
Meanwhile, the UK government declares that:
The policies and practices of the Israeli government, including a further entrenchment of Israeli control, are undermining stability and prospects for a two-state solution.
This is a sick joke. Israeli openly declares “no Palestinian state” in word and deed. The state itself is running a campaign of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. These actions don’t just “undermine” the two state solution. “Undermine it” would be adding a few more living spaces to one or two settlements. Israel is killing the two state solution.
We call on the Government of Israel to end its expansion of settlements and administrative powers, ensure accountability for settler violence and investigate allegations against Israeli forces,
The cynical parody continues. They have been “calling on” Israel for some time. The very opposite of the above happens. Settlements expand. Settler violence, backed by the army gets worse. There are virtually no investigations. As far back as 2017 Israeli NGO B’tslem was writing reports about there being no accountability for human rights abuses in the West Bank. [12] Israel has not being holding its own forces accountable for years. All of this is fully known in diplomatic circles. Here, for example, is Volker Türk UN Commisioner for Human Rights, making a statement in February 2026:
Today, the situation in the West Bank is particularly disturbing.
Recent Israeli measures expanding land expropriation consolidate the annexation of Palestinian territory. This is in flagrant breach of the Palestinian right to self-determination.
Israeli security forces continue to use unnecessary and disproportionate force, and have killed 1,020 Palestinians since 7 October 2023, according to figures verified by my Office.
Taken together, Israel’s actions appear aimed at making a permanent demographic change in Gaza and the West Bank, raising concerns about ethnic cleansing.
Mr. Vice-President,
The absence of accountability for the egregious violations committed is nothing short of shameful. [13]
And – what does the UK government say, faced with this open state run campaign of ethnic cleansing?
We reaffirm our unwavering commitment to a comprehensive, just and lasting peace based on a negotiated two-state solution in accordance with relevant UN Security Council resolutions where two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, live side by side in peace and security within secure and recognised borders.
This is blatant and extremely cynical. One imagines that one reason Israel continues with their ethnic cleansing is because all they ever meet is these bland statments “reaffirming the two state solution” even while the openly carry out and increase the speed of the ethnic cleansing which is putting an end to any idea of the two state solution. It isn’t even as if Israel is hiding it.
One final thought. Imagine, hard though it is, that the UK or the EU ever found the integrity or the courage to say enough is enough and to withdraw the diplomatic, economic and military support them give the above-the-law apartheid state of Israel. I would not be surprised if Israel threatened to nuke them. In short – the state with the dangerous fundamentalists armed with a nuclear bomb already exists in the Middle East. You reap what you sow – and maybe they/we will one day.
Notes
- https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c202wp2rl09o
- https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-sanctions-extremist-settlers-in-the-west-bank
- https://www.savethechildren.net/news/gaza-20000-children-killed-23-months-war-more-one-child-killed-every-hour
- https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/38-children-were-killed-20-orphaned-on-oct-7-the-state-did-not-pass-the-test-of-protecting-them/
- https://www.btselem.org/htmx/216748?destination=/gaza_doctrine_west_bank_under_fire
- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/19/civilians-made-up-15-of-every-16-people-israel-killed-in-gaza-since-march-data-suggests
- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/19/west-bank-children-killed-unprecedented-rate
- https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgdzxpkdd7o
- https://www.icj-cij.org/node/204176 In its report the ICJ commented on Israel’s apartheid regime in the West Bank: “The Court further observes that Israel’s legislation and measures impose and serve to maintain a near-complete separation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem between the settler and Palestinian communities. For this reason, the Court considers that Israel’s legislation and measures constitute a breach of Article 3 of CERD.” CERD refers to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination of 21 December 1965 (“CERD”).
- https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/21/middleeast/netanyahu-palestinian-sovereignty-two-state-solution-intl / https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/11/israels-netanyahu-says-there-will-be-no-palestinian-state / https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/responding-to-false-icj-ruling-pm-says-jewish-people-cant-be-occupiers-in-their-own-land/
- https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/monthly-forecast/2006-11/lookup_c_glkwlemtisg_b_2193649.php
- https://www.btselem.org/accountability (and https://www.btselem.org/press_releases/20140905_failure_to_investigate)
