Britain must sanction Israel, not just its settlers

Labour MP for Norwich South.Published On 30 Oct 202630 Oct 2026This week I tried to enter the illegally occupied West Bank, along with two other British parliamentarians and an international delegation of observers. We were all interrogated and detained by Israeli forces for nearly eight hours and finally prevented from crossing the border.Our unpleasant experience pales in comparison to the daily experience of Palestinians living under occupation. Year after year, decade after decade, Palestinians have faced not simply inconvenience but a systematic attempt to eradicate their existence. We have seen a genocide in its most brutal form in Gaza. But in the West Bank we see a slow-motion form of ethnic cleansing, perpetrated by Israeli forces and their settler militias.And it gets worse. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called on Israel last month to do the same in the occupied West Bank as “what we did in Gaza”. And so we came to shed light on Israel’s crimes, including the brutal attacks on olive harvesters which seek to deprive Palestinians of the livelihood that sustains them.As the suffering inflicted on Palestinians grows ever more extreme, so Israel moves to stop the o...