Why is Trump silent on UK sanctions against Israeli West Bank settlements? – The Latest

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1:19There's been an accusation of effectively war crimes made by Ed Miliband against the Israeli government. The reaction of the Israeli government is probably on the level that was foreseen. Opinion about Israel is changing in America at a rate of knots. We don't want to see anything destabilising going on right now in the West Bank. Obviously, we're not going to do what the UK did. Trump is a vengeful man. Any bomb that has been ticking will explode. From the Guardians today in Focus, this is The Latest with me, Lucy Hove. There's been a really big fallout to what was announced in the Commons yesterday by the new Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband in regards to Israel and specifically this package of sanctions, including sanctions on Israeli settlement activity in the illegally occupied West Bank.

2:11Patrick Wintour, you're our diplomatic editor. Criticism has come in particular from the UK's chief rabbi how has meliband responded to the criticism and what are is the criticism of the chief rabbi well it was to be expected because uh there's been really extensive consultations both the pro-palestinian groups and with uh jewish groups in the uk ahead of this announcement and those consultations were running right up until the day before the announcement itself i think I think there were about six Palestinian NGOs and the Palestinian embassy were in just immediately beforehand. So I don't think anyone would have been overly surprised by what was announced.

2:55And certainly the main element, which is this ban on trade with settlement goods, was well advertised. Now, in terms of a response, there's twofold really from the Jewish community or anyway from the British Board of Deputies, which is one is that this is going to make Jewish people in the UK more vulnerable to attack, because I assume the argument is that there's been an accusation of effectively war crimes made by Ed Miliband against the Israeli government. And the second line of attack was that this is going to lead to a possible change in the result in the Israeli elections on October the 27th, where the argument will run that Benjamin Nunn will use this attack on him as an attack on Israel and as he has in previous elections will kind of raise the security banner even higher above his election campaign.

3:49Yeah, which is surprising because as we discussed on yesterday's show with Emma Graham Harrison, And Miliband was so careful and specific in his language to criticise not the existence of the state of Israel. He spoke of his own identity as a Jewish man, his visits to gibbiz and to Israel as a child and since. This was about the specific actions of the Israeli government, some figures within that government, and specifically what he labelled settler terrorists and their activities in the illegally occupied West Bank. So he was careful to address those points. Of course he was. I mean, I think the first sort of almost third of a very long statement was taken up with a restatement of his own credentials in terms of relationship to the Jewish community and his own heritage.

4:38In fact, his mother was a victim of the Holocaust in the sense that he was escaped from the Holocaust. And he understands Israel in a way in which I think a lot of front-rank Labour politicians don't. So I think this is actually one occasion where the individual, the personality does matter. And I don't think if he wasn't, if someone else was the foreign secretary, I don't think what was announced yesterday would have happened. So it's fascinating in that regard. But I think one of his strongest arguments was to say that it was almost anti-Semitic in itself, that if he criticized the Israeli government, the current Israeli government, he was therefore criticizing Israel or Jews.

5:18And he said, you know, that is just a kind of blending that is just wrong. And I think the criticism that could be made of the British Board of Deputies and to more recently the conservative Friends of Israel is that they equate Likud, which is Netanyahu's party, with Israel. And there's a variety of opinions inside Israel, some of which don't agree with what's been happening about the settlements. Yeah. Yeah. So the chief rabbi, Sir Ephraim Mervis, has been critical, but the Conservative Party, as you were touching on there, have also been critical. The shadow foreign secretary, Tom Tugendhat, said that the government was enacting policies that, in his view, wouldn't work and that they knew that.

6:06The implication being that this is sort of performative politics. I wonder if you think there's any validity in that because Ed Miliband did say that this is a sanctions programme that is going to take several months to enact. And obviously we're dealing with a crisis that is very live. Yeah, no, I think there are points that I think Tugendhat made which are worth pursuing. I mean, the two issues that have really dogged the previous foreign secretaries. One is how do you distinguish between goods from Israel and those goods that have come from the occupied territories? That's very hard. The UK government's now saying they can use a postcode method and there will be an onus upon businesses to say exactly which postcode this good came from.

6:51Well, that might be true, but it has been a truth that for five or six years, foreign secretaries have been told it's impossible to make that distinction. And the second thing is that there's a problem about the way in which the human rights sanctions work in relation to Israel in that you can say if there's some act of violence, the human rights sanctions have been violated. But if it was simply supporting an illegal settlement through a business connection, then that was impossible to implement. And they're having to change the law on that. And even though it's something called secondary legislation, which isn't as big potatoes as primary legislation, they're saying it's going to take six to nine months to do.

7:34And that reflects the fact that I think they've got a lot of work to do on drafting the legislation in the right way. But I think the big thing is that Miliband had looked at all these caveats and concerns and decided the occasion was too big and he needed to get this sorted. Yeah, yeah. And it is this seismic shift in UK-Israeli relations. And you've written a very fascinating piece about sort of what happened inside the room, why this decision was taken now and why it didn't happen under Starmer's government. What did you learn through your conversation? Well, I do think it is partly to do with Miliband himself.

8:08I mean, he is a very confident minister. He's been around for a long time. You remember he was a special advisor in the Treasury under Gordon Brown. So he knows the ins and outs of Whitehall. He was, whatever you may have thought of his policies, an effective climate change minister. And I've heard from people who are outside Whitehall, but maybe in sort of Gulf states who say they've been impressed by the speed of which decisions are being made now in the Foreign Office. And I think there's a kind of different relationship between the Foreign Office and Number 10 than there was under Keir Starmer.

8:42I think Keir Starmer sort of, in fact, I know this from contacts that he deliberately pushed it to one side and let it be the same thing. He almost got to the point he didn't really know what the foreign office was for, you know, something to do with Africa, because he did all the foreign policy work. So he did Ukraine and he did the relations with Trump and Israel. So and I think that now I think there's going to be a different relationship because I think Id Miliband is a very strong foreign secretary. Yeah, yeah. Fascinating. And now, of course, Sama has stood down to focus on international affairs.

9:16No surprise there. So Israel's response has been incredibly strong. Immediately after Miliband's speech, there was the closure of the British consulate in occupied East Jerusalem. 11 MPs and one activist have been barred from Israel. Was the government prepared for that? Would that come as a surprise? No, I think if you look at the way in which Israel reacted to other countries that have taken similar measures, this is in line with that. I think the bigger allegation that was being made would be an end of intelligence cooperation between Israel and the UK. And obviously it's a world in which is quite murky and I can't vouch for it forever.

10:02But from what Ed Miliband was saying, and it seemed based on conversations, that is the intelligence cooperation is going to continue and neither side want to get mired in a kind of political conflict, particularly ahead of the election. So I think the reaction of the Israeli government is probably on the level that was foreseen. Yeah. So there was a lot of anxiety amongst ministers about the reaction of Donald Trump, whether he was going to be critical of this. We know that Andy Burnham spoke to Trump on the phone on Monday, so none of this would have been a surprise. But his silence has been quite notable, as we're speaking we may tweet something later but um but what can we read into that silence sure no i mean any bomb that has been ticking will explode um but that before the announcement there was murky suggestions that the falkland islands would be dragged into this in some way or another and that he would back the argentinian claim to sovereignty over the islands because of this issue.

11:06But it's pretty clear from what the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, said that he understands the objectives of the UK government, if he may not share the methods. And I think it's worth bearing in mind that opinion about Israel is changing in America at a rate of knots. And it's not just inside the Democrat Party, but also inside the Republican Party. And I think you can also not forget that Trump is a vengeful man and he feels he's been stuck into this political labyrinth of the Iran war and the man who's put him in that labyrinth which he cannot extricate himself is Benjamin Netanyahu who told him we can do all this in four or five days don't worry about it and there'll be a new regime in Iran and it'll be just like Venezuela well it hasn't been like that.

11:58And poor old Donald Trump is looking at gas prices as he goes to campaign in the midterm elections. And he blames Israel. Yeah, it's fascinating. So you have a real sense of the US and Israel increasingly isolated whilst a number of countries, France, Canada, join the UK in taking this action, which is pretty striking in terms of global alliances. Absolutely. Well, Patrick, thank you so much for your time. My pleasure. that's it for today my huge thanks again to Patrick Wintour you can keep up with all his reporting over at theguardian.com and I'd also really recommend if you haven't already listening to the second series of the Guardian's chart-topping Black Box hosted by Michael Safi I can't recommend it highly enough the new season is exploring people's relationship with AI chatbots and how they're quietly reshaping our lives all episodes are out now search Black Box wherever you get your podcasts.

12:55Thanks for listening to this episode of The Latest. Today in Focus will be back in your feeds as usual tomorrow morning. The Latest will be back tomorrow night. This episode was produced by Leo Schick. The senior producer was Ryan Ramgoban. The executive producer was Zoe Hitch and it was presented by me, Lucy Hoth.

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13:51Transcription by CastingWords