The British foreign secretary Ed Miliband said that the Israeli government was losing friends and allies because of its actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, which he said had mobilised people around the world.
“The Israeli government is losing friends. It’s not gaining allies; it’s lost allies. It’s losing allies all over,” Ed Miliband said on Tuesday in an interview with UK-based podcast The Rest is Politics.
Miliband said the UK’s recent sanctions targeting illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank followed warnings that the two-state solution was being “destroyed by the facts on the ground”.
He said the measures were intended to target the “illegal occupation”, rather than Israel as a state.
“The status quo is not working,” Miliband said, pointing to Israel’s E1 settlement expansion project, which he said had long been viewed as a red line because it could separate East Jerusalem from the West Bank and make a Palestinian state unviable.
He also cited the International Court of Justice’s 2024 ruling on Israel’s occupation, the length of the occupation and the displacement of Palestinians as factors behind the UK government’s decision to act.
Miliband said the UK could not “give up” in the face of what he described as “settler terrorism”, adding that he believed there could be no stable Middle East without a two-state solution.
‘Nothing can justify what has unfolded in Gaza’
Miliband said Israel’s restrictions on humanitarian aid entering Gaza “seems like an absolutely deliberate strategy” and described the situation in the enclave as “terrible”.
“Nothing can justify what has unfolded in Gaza,” he said.
He said he had recently met people including a doctor who had worked in Gaza, describing what they had told him as “absolutely unspeakable” and “appalling”.
Miliband also questioned the effectiveness of the ceasefire, saying: “Since the so-called ceasefire, 1,200 Palestinians have been killed. That’s not much of a ceasefire.”
He said the UK was seeking to send a message that the international community would not stand by as the occupation continued.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen in Israeli elections on October 27, but we are trying to send a very clear message to the Israeli people,” he said.
Miliband announced a series of measures last week, including a ban on imports from illegal Israeli settlements, sanctions on companies and individuals facilitating settlement expansion, and additional sanctions on Israeli settlers accused of supporting or inciting violence against Palestinians.
