UK’s Conservative government was poised to impose sanctions on Israeli ministers prior to election defeat

Prior to the July elections which swept the Tories from power, the Sunak government was preparing sanctions against two senior Israeli government ministers over their support for ‘extreme settlers.’

By World Israel News Staff

The British government under Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was poised to impose sanctions against two senior Israeli government ministers, before the government was swept from office in a historic electoral defeat.

Speaking with the BBC on Tuesday, former British Prime Minister David Cameron, who served as Foreign Secretary under Prime Minister Sunak, revealed that on the eve of the July General Election, his office had been drawing up sanctions to impose on Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir (Otzma  Yehudit) and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (Religious Zionist Party).

Cameron said he had been “working up” the sanctions plan, which targeted the two ministers, whom he decried as “extremist,” over their support for “extreme settlers” and their criticism of international demands to allow aid into the Gaza Strip after the October 7th atrocities.

Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, Cameron recalled, had “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.”

Sources in Whitehall cited by the BBC claimed that the sanctions would have included a travel ban on the two, along with economic sanctions, including the freezing of any assets in the UK or held by British entities.

The former premier explained that the sanctions were not imposed prior to the July election since they would have been perceived as being “too much of a political act.”

Cameron said the sanctions were intended to send a message to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “this is not good enough and has to stop.”

On July 4th, British voters handed the Tories a historic defeat, with Keir Starmer’s Labour Party winning 411 seats out of 650 in the House of Commons, a gain of 209 since the 2019 election, while the Conservatives plummeted from 365 seats in 2019 to just 121 – the worst showing in the party’s near two-hundred-year history.