UK readies sanctions against Israel to deter proposed illegal West Bank settlement

Move comes as 137 Labour MPs sign letter demanding ‘urgent, concrete action’ to stop settler violence

The UK Foreign Office and a group of western countries are due to announce a package of sanctions against Israel this week designed to deter companies from becoming involved in a proposed West Bank settlement that would split the territory in two and render the concept of a two-state solution near impossible.

Nine countries including France, the UK and Australia have warned that settlement violence must stop and no company should be involved in what is known as the E1 development.

Tenders were opened this month for the development of more than 3,000 homes between Jerusalem and the Ma’ale Adumim. The development would split the West Bank between north and south, and so in effect make a contiguous Palestinian West Bank impossible.

It comes as 137 Labour MPs – including the former health secretary Wes Streeting, who said this week he felt he was “hitting up against a brick wall” when he tried to raise concerns about Gaza in government – sent a letter to the foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, urging her to take “urgent, concrete action to counter the escalation of violations against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, in particular by ending trade with illegal Israeli settlements”.

Melanie Ward, who organised the letter and was the chief executive of Medical Aid for Palestinians before becoming an MP, said: “Banning settlement trade would send the clearest possible message to Israel that settlements can have no viable economic future and are rejected by the world. This is needed now more than ever.”

Last week, the UN committee on the exercise of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people condemned an order signed by the Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, to start displacing the Palestinian Bedouin community of Khan al-Ahmar in the occupied West Bank, saying it would “heighten the risk of forced transfer of the civilian population” and calling such a move illegal and a war crime.

The MPs’ letter said Khan al-Ahmar was “in a gruelling struggle against erasure, displacement and state-backed settler violence as part of Israel’s E1 plan,” which it said sought to bisect the West Bank and would “make the two-state solution that we all want to see an impossibility”.