Israel announced a series of retaliatory measures against Britain on Tuesday evening, hours after London imposed a ban on trade with Israel's illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank alongside France and Canada.
Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said Israel would close the British Consulate in occupied Jerusalem, which is accredited to the Palestinian Authority and serves Palestinians, expel the British representatives from the international monitoring center at Kiryat Gat, halt British activity training Palestinian Authority Police forces in Ramallah, and bar 12 British public officials from entering Israel, accusing them of anti-Israel activity and of denying Israel's right to exist.
Saar framed the move as a warning to any government that acts against Israel. He claimed Britain had planned the sanctions long in advance for domestic political reasons ahead of this month's Labour Party conference, and warned that Israel would take retaliatory measures against other countries as well, at its own discretion. "Whoever acts against Israel, Israel will harm them, and they will lose their influence and relevance," he said, vowing that steps against Israel would not go without a response.
The Israeli foreign minister denounced the British trade ban as morally distorted and a blatant interference in the affairs of a sovereign state, insisting that the Jewish people have a right to live throughout the land no less than the British in Britain or the French in France. He called the boycott of settlement goods a despicable practice and sanctions on services abhorrent, and cast the measure as foreign interference in Israel's October 27 election.
Saar also repeated Israel's rejection of a Palestinian state, claiming the Israeli public overwhelmingly opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state, which he described as a jihadist terror state in the heart of the land, and asserting that the conflict would not be resolved by declarations from London and Paris.
The furious Israeli response stands in sharp contrast to the way Britain itself has privately characterized the sanctions. British diplomats reportedly assured the United States before the announcement that the measures are largely symbolic and would have no material impact on the UK's wider trade or security relationship with Israel, given that settlement goods make up only a tiny fraction of the roughly 8 billion dollars in annual bilateral trade.
