https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/why-sanctions-are-needed-israel

History suggests apartheid ends not through appeals to conscience alone but through sustained economic and political pressure, says HUGH LANNING

…

With every red line it crosses from the Nakba to genocide, Israel reveals its contempt for international law. It revels in the impunity the Western world grants that result partly from guilt rightly felt for the horrific crimes we inflicted on Jewish people in our countries, not just in the second world war, but over centuries of antisemitism, which is still ongoing.

But also, because Israel is a major part of the West’s colonial and now neoliberal strategy in the Middle East.

Under the protective wing of an increasingly authoritarian US and led by the ever-stronger fascist and racist tendencies within, Israel believes it has a generational opportunity to conquer Palestine completely and establish the zionist dream of  a “greater Israel” from the river to the sea.

The mentality is: “If we got away with genocide in Gaza, we can get away with anything.”

How is this avalanche of violence, death and atrocity to be stopped? Well, not by the mealy mouthed “sanctions” recently announced by Yvette Cooper. When is a sanction not a sanction? When it does nothing to the perpetrators of the crime. Under international law the official role of sanctions is to bring pressure to bear on the miscreants to achieve compliance.

The token measures announced “target individuals and entities involved in financing and enabling settler violence in the occupied West Bank.” No mention of the Israeli state.

The Israeli government is a settler government; the forcible settlement of the West Bank is its official policy. It legalises and legitimises even the outlier settlements illegal under Israeli law. The IDF either stands idly by or actively protects and supports the settlers as they go about their violent business. Not surprisingly as many of the soldiers are themselves settlers — brothers and sisters of those committing the crimes.

The government itself is riddled by members of extreme settler parties. Indeed, Israel is a settler colonial entity, all but a few of its citizens are settlers.

…

Apart from an arms embargo on the two-way trade with Israel, the new Burnham government ought to institute an audit of all government, local and national, expenditure, contracts and co-operation to identify and stop any support for companies engaged in supporting the settlements and the occupation — Oracle and Palantir being obvious examples.

As the US has done with Russia and supporters of Palestine — follow the money. The war, the occupation, the settlements are all funded with much investment and finance coming from abroad and being channelled through British financial institutions. This should be stopped.

The EU has a positive trade agreement with Israel treating it an as associate member which Britain is trying to replicate following Brexit. These trade agreements should be ended.

The government and its representatives ought to support, not block, moves in international bodies to ban and boycott Israel — be it Fifa or Eurovision — Israel should be treated as the apartheid state it is.

So complicit has the British state been for decades, the list of what could be done is almost endless.

…

Hugh Lanning will be among the speakers at a Labour and Palestine online event on Tuesday July 7 looking at ending Britain’s role in crimes against the Palestinian people. Find out more and register for the meeting at bit.ly/endukcomplicity.

Join the National March for Palestine July 18 in central London at noon. Visit palestinecampaign.org for more details.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/why-sanctions-are-needed-israel