UK changes its tune on Israeli policies in the West Bank

Source: The Conversation – UK

There’s been a broad spectrum of reactions to the UK government’s decision to introduce a ban on trade in goods and services from illegal Israeli settlements. These have ranged from “it’s about time”, to “too little, too late” to “pathetic undergraduate politics” (this last from someone I was chatting to after the announcement was made on Tuesday).

But for anyone who has been watching the Occupied Palestinian Territories this year, the regular reports of illegal land grabs and violence enacted by some settler groups on Palestinians in the West Bank, many of whose families have lived there for generations, has been more than distressing. It’s easy to see why the Burnham government felt it needed to take action alongside 11 other countries.

But what was remarkable was the tone of Ed Miliband’s statement to the House of Commons. He spoke of “settler terrorism”, “ethnic cleansing”, the “unlawful” occupation of the West Bank and Israel’s “expansionist agenda via illegal settlements”. It’s a historic shift in tone and policy, writes Mohamed Ibrahim Hafez of Nottingham Trent University.

Hafez believes a key factor in the decision was an advisory opinion released by the International Court of Justice in July 2024 which ruled that Israel’s ongoing presence in the West Bank has no legal basis and confirmed that states have a duty not to support or facilitate the continuation of that situation. He says that the situation was made all the more urgent by the Netanyahu government’s approval of the controversial E1 settlement, which would effectively cut the West Bank in half and make a Palestinian state virtually impossible.

This is exactly the point of E1. Launching the plan in August 2025, Israel’s far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said the development “buries the idea of a Palestinian state, and continues the many steps we are taking on the ground as part of the de facto sovereignty plan”.

Rory McCarthy, formerly The Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent, now a professor of politics and Islam at Durham University, has given us this detailed description of the E1 project, as well as a rundown on the massive and rapid expansion of illegal Israeli settler activity.

Of course, the burning question is whether this ban can be enforced and whether it will bring any discernible benefit to the Palestinian people. To which the answers are: “with difficulty” and “it’s unlikely”, write Sarah Schiffling, Claire Hannibal and Rosanna Cole.

The three authors, experts in supply chains, ethical procurement and responsible sourcing, look at other attempts – some successful – to apply such sanctions. They conclude that not only is the ban fraught with difficulty but that it could actually hurt Palestinians trying to export their agricultural produce to western markets.

German politics: where opposites attract

The success of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in the state election in Saxony-Anhalt at the weekend had been widely predicted (not least by The Conversation). But it still came as quite a shock when the AfD outperformed expectations by capturing 43% of the vote in this small state in eastern Germany.

The party’s manifesto includes “deportation offensive” of refugees, closer ties with Russia and the prohibition of the Islamic call to prayer. Such measures seemed to attract a surge of support from people who had not previously voted, writes Ed Turner, an expert in German politics at Aston University.

A map of Germany showing the boundaries of its states. — The state of Saxony-Anhalt is located in east-central Germany.
Radzas2008 / Shutterstock

Turner believes the AfD successfully rode a wave of anti-federal sentiment among Germans in the east who feel that reunification has made them into second-class citizens. He says the next election to watch will be on September 20 in Mecklenburg West Pomerania, also part of the former East Germany. The most recent polling there gives the AfD a healthy lead over the Social Democrats.

Germany’s mainstream political parties have long operated what they call a “firewall” to try to keep extremist parties out of any coalitions. Since its foundation in 2013, this has operated explicitly in relation to the AfD. But now it looks as if the AfD may have found a coalition partner. Interestingly it’s a party on the far left of the political spectrum, the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW).

The BSW won five seats last weekend, giving it enough to help push the AfD into power. BSW founder Sahra Wagenknecht has specifically stated she wants to “end this firewall idiocy”, while the party’s leader in Saxony has said “there are, of course, projects that we can very well imagine doing with the AfD”. One of these is action against immigration.

Sarah Wagner of Queens University Belfast charts the similarities and differences between two parties ostensibly on opposite extremes of Germany’s political spectrum.

Why Donald Trump needs a better story on Iran

At a special Republican National Convention to promote the GOP’s chances ahead of November’s midterm elections, Donald Trump told supporters that the war in Iran was likely to last until after the poll – as would high gasoline prices.

With his party trailing the Democrats two months out, this is not necessarily the message Republican grandees were hoping for. But, as Ben Soodavar of King’s College London writes here, the US president has failed to establish a credible narrative for the war to offer the electorate.

Soodavar, an expert in the psychology of political decision-making in war, notes that with a conflict-averse Maga support base, the US president needs a story to maintain public support. His Republican predecessor George W Bush had such a story after 9/11 to support the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (even if the story proved to be fictitious and the wars eventually unsuccessful). Trump has no such story.

Meanwhile Iran grows ever more aggressive, launching attacks on US warships in the Persian Gulf and boasting that its new solid-fuel ballistic missile will give it the ability to “take action against any threat, even before it is carried out”. Tehran also asserts that a new agreement with Oman will give it control of traffic through the contested Strait of Hormuz.

Middle East experts Bamo Nouri, of the University of West London, and Inderjeet Parmar, of City University of London, believe that “these developments suggest that Iran is no longer simply responding to escalation – it is increasingly trying to drive it”. It is, they say, a new and potentially dangerous phase in the war.

Remembering 9/11

Tomorrow marks 25 years since the devastating September 11 al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington. As part of The Conversation’s coverage of the anniversary, we asked Pete Fussey and Mark Maguire, authors of The Empty Watchtower: Counterterrorism After 9/11 to survey the security measures put in place since 2001 aimed at guarding against the repetition of such an outrage.

Worryingly, their research has found that more advanced technology is not necessarily the answer, particularly when fused on to human systems that remain fallible. The result is that a quarter of a century after 9/11 we remain vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/11/uk-changes-its-tune-on-israeli-policies-in-the-west-bank/