RED LINES: Swansea Bay’s MPs back the settlement goods ban, days after the city carried its own through the streets

The Government’s West Bank announcement has echoed through Swansea this week: three of the region’s MPs have publicly backed the new ban on settlement goods, four days after hundreds of residents carried a “red line” banner the length of Oxford Street.

Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told the Commons on Tuesday that the UK will ban imports of goods from illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, and sanction companies and individuals who finance or facilitate settlement expansion.

He said Israel’s issuing of tenders for around 1,200 homes in the E1 settlement east of Jerusalem had crossed a “long-term red line”. The import ban is expected to take effect within six to nine months.

The language went further than any previous British government statement: Miliband said the Government recognises “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians is taking place in parts of the West Bank, carried out by what he called “settler terrorists”, and that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is unlawful.

Swansea West MP Torsten Bell called it “a powerful and important message” in a statement: “Britain will not be silent in the face of deep injustice, and nor is it powerless.”

“Like so many people across Swansea, I have been horrified by the heartbreaking scenes in Gaza and the West Bank,” he said. “Yet another red line has been crossed with the issuing of tenders for the E1 settlement. That would cut through the middle of the West Bank and risk fatally undermining the potential for the two-state solution we are committed to support.”

Mr Bell said the measures “do justice to terrible recent developments and our recognition of a Palestinian state, something I have pushed for over many years”. The UK formally recognised the State of Palestine a year ago this month.

His statement also addressed division at home directly: “Our argument is not with the people of Israel, but with the conduct of its current government. And, because this issue has too often divided our communities here at home, our argument is also that holding Jewish people in Swansea, Britain or anywhere else responsible for the actions of the Israeli Government is wrong, antisemitic and intolerable.”

Gower MP Tonia Antoniazzi backed the move on the day of the announcement, writing: “The situation in Palestine is a moral emergency. A humanitarian crisis is unfolding in Gaza, and increased settler terrorism is driving Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank.”

Ms Antoniazzi was among nearly 60 Labour MPs who wrote to the Foreign Secretary in July last year, calling for recognition of a Palestinian state and for restrictions on trade with illegal settlements, more than a year before the Government acted on either.

Aberafan Maesteg MP Stephen Kinnock said he was “proud to be part of a government that’s taking action against the illegal settlements”, adding: “I called for an import ban in Parliament back in 2017, and the situation has only worsened since then. A country that imports from an illegal settlement is by definition complicit. Today that complicity ends.”

In a video posted alongside, he said continued trade with settlements “creates an economic incentive for more illegal acts”, encouraging “the demolition of homes and communities to make way for settlements, simultaneously denying Palestinians access to economic opportunities”.

The announcement has critics. The Conservatives’ shadow foreign secretary Tom Tugendhat warned that turning Israel into a “pariah” risks “a further rise in antisemitic violence on our own streets”.

Israel reacted furiously: foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar called the measures “outrageous lies” and announced the closure of the British consulate in Jerusalem.

In Swansea, the announcement landed in a city that had already made its feelings visible. Four days earlier, hundreds carried the Red Line for Palestine through the city centre, a banner so long it filled Oxford Street, from the Guildhall over the Copr Bay bridge.

Organisers described that line as a symbol of “our determination to keep fighting for Palestine and our refusal to stay silent in the face of political pressure”. Gŵyr Abertawe MS Safa Elhassan was among those at the start.

In practice, the ban will bar goods produced in West Bank settlements from UK import once in force, with services including financing, construction, real estate and advertising for settlements also targeted. France and Canada announced parallel bans, with a 12-nation statement in support.

Ministers stressed the measures target settlements rather than Israel as a whole, and Miliband said he opposes the wider boycott movement.

Mr Bell closed his statement on the goal underneath it all: “What this government is determined to salvage is the only course for peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians: the two state solution.”