Previous government planned sanctions against Israeli ministers – Cameron

The previous government was preparing to sanction two Israeli ministers over comments encouraging blocking aid to Gaza, Lord David Cameron has said.

Lord Cameron told the BBC on Tuesday that he had been “working up” sanctions against Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich and national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir during his final days as foreign secretary.

He described the two men as “extremists” and argued that sanctions would have been a way of putting “pressure” on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to act in line with international law.

Too “political”

Lord Cameron said: “When you look at what they say, they have said things like encouraging people to stop aid convoys going into Gaza, they have encouraged extreme settlers in the West Bank with the appalling things they have been carrying out.”

Asked why the sanctions had not been imposed, Lord Cameron said he had been advised the move would have been too “political” during an election.

Mr Smotrich was recently criticised for appearing to suggest it might be “just and moral” to withhold food aid from Gaza, while Mr Ben-Gvir has backed the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank.

The current Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, has also condemned both men, but declined to commit to sanctioning them when urged to do so during a Commons debate last month.

Mistake

Lord Cameron urged the Government to “look again at the sanctions issue”, arguing that his was a better way of pressuring Mr Netanyahu than suspending arms exports to Israel.

He said: “I thought the Government made a mistake over the arms embargo because, fundamentally, if you are, on the one hand, protecting, helping to protect Israel from a state-on-state attack by Iran, but at the same time you are withholding the export of weapons, that policy makes no sense.”

Arguing that it was “right to back Israel’s right to self-defence”, he said that support was not “unconditional” and the Government should be prepared to use its sanctions regime against “extremist” ministers “to say this is not good enough and has to stop”.

In February, the Conservative government did sanction four “extremist” Israeli settlers accused of attacking Palestinians in the West Bank.