Sabeel-Kairos UK statement on settlement trade ban

9th September 2026

Read our response to the UK government’s announcement that it will ban trade with Israeli settlements.

We welcome the UK government’s decision to ban goods from illegal Israeli settlements entering the UK market and to sanction companies and individuals involved in services to settlements including construction and financing. This is long overdue and finally the UK is starting to act on its responsibilities within international law.

We also welcome the additional sanctions on arms licences, although a full suspension of the arms trade with Israel is much needed, and supported by a majority of the UK public.

Further, we welcome the government’s acknowledgment that the occupation is unlawful – bringing its position in line with the ICJ advisory opinion in 2024, which until now there was no official response to. We also welcome the accurate use of the term ethnic cleansing to describe the deliberate erasure of Palestinians communities in the West Bank by the state of Israel. The UK government should consider again the comprehensive analysis done by leading UN and human rights institutions which determine that the minimum criteria for both apartheid and genocide have been met, and consider further sanctions, particularly on ministers who support and promote war crimes against Palestinians.

In his address to parliament, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said that the measures announced on the 8th September would take 6-9 months to come into effect.

Our partner Kairos Palestine said the following in response to the announcement:

“Palestinians are being forcibly displaced and their communities erased now, not in nine months. We welcome these measures, but delayed justice is no justice for those losing their homes and land today. The UK must act immediately, go much further, and impose real costs on those enabling and profiting from Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise. This is no longer a time for statements of concern; it is a time for decisive and immediate action” (Rifat Kassis, Director, Kairos Palestine)

We urge the UK government to implement these long-overdue sanctions with haste, and we also encourage Christians across the UK to engage with the calls from Palestinian Christians to stand in active, costly solidarity with them, including supporting individual boycotts against companies supporting the occupation and divestment initiatives in UK churches.