Netanyahu to be pressed over settlement expansion at Sunak meeting, minister says
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu will 'have short meeting' with Rishi Sunak at Downing Street on Friday and also with home secretary Suella Braverman, foreign office minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan confirms
Lee Harpin is the Jewish News's political editor
Benjamin Netanyahu will be pressed on the issue of settlement expansion and demolitions of Palestinian houses when he meets Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at Downing Street on Friday, a government minister has said.
The Israeli PM will also meet with Suella Braverman tomorrow after his request for talks with the prime minister during his short visit to the UK was accepted.
Conservative MP Pauline Latham had raised concerns in the Commons that a two-state solution in the Middle East was becoming increasingly unlikely with settlements being “built on top of Palestinian houses” and they were insisting on demolitions of Palestinian houses.”
“I am certain that the prime minister will raise those issues tomorrow when he has prime minister Netanyahu here,” Anne-Marie Trevelyan, a minister of state in the foreign office, said in response.
In a lengthy debate in response to an urgent question the need to de-escalate tensions between Israel and the Palestinians, the minister also said: “Prime Minister Netanyahu will be visiting the UK tomorrow and has asked for a meeting with the prime minister. He will have a short meeting with the prime minister and the home secretary.
“I know that the prime minister will raise, as all good, trusted friends and partners do, those issues that concern us.”
Labour’s shadow middle east minister Bambos Charalambous raised concerns about rising terror attacks in the Middle East, and the rhetoric of ministers in Netanyahu’s far-right coalition government, in a worsening situation in the region.
He urged PM Sunak to raise issues such as the Israeli government’s proposed judicial reforms and the “commitment to democracy” at his meeting with Netanyahu on Friday.
Charalambous also told the Commons of his concerns that the bilateral roadmap, signed by foreign secretary James Cleverly and his Israeli counterpart Eli Cohen earlier this week, “dilutes long standing UK positions held by successive governments in relation to international law.”
He added:”The roadmap makes no mention of supporting a two state solution and implies that the settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories could be treated as part of Israel for the purposes of trade.”
Responding Trevelyan said the roadmap “fulfils the commitments made in November 2021” and “contains provisions on the importance of regional cooperation.”
Trevelyan later said Cleverly had “emphasised the importance of Israeli de-escalation” ahead of the forthcoming Passover, Ramadan and Easter festival, during talks with Israel’s foreign minister Eli Cohen.
Chipping Barnet Tory MP Theresa Villers told the Commons how in recent weeks “children under the age of 15” had been responsible for Palestinian terror attacks, a sign of a “a toxic culture of radicalisation and anti-Israel hatred.”
The minister said this was one of the “most distressing aspects” of the continued violence.
She added: “I have no doubt the prime minister will raise it in his meeting tomorrow… to ask all parties to de-escalate violence.”
But several MPs called for the UK to step up its pressure on Israel over “illegal settlements on the West Bank.”
Labour’s Wayne David asked: “Will the UK make it absolutely clear to Benjamin Netanyahu that any attempt to annex the West Bank is totally, unequivocally unacceptable?”
Trevelyan said the UK is “intensely focused on, and concerned” about increased violence in the West Bank. She said the UK wanted to see the Palestinian Authority resume security cooperation with Israel, and “fight against terror” added “too many” Israelis including civilians had been killed in recent months.
Trevelyan also said the UK believed Israel “must do more to tackle settler violence” and “end the culture of impunity.”
She called for Israel to stop illegal settlement expansion, which “risks further undermining a two-state solution.”
For the Liberal Democrats Alistair Carmichael said Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich had “taken the level of rhetoric to a new level of unacceptability” and added it was “imperative we do what can to offer protection the Palestinian people by recognising as an urgency a Palestinian state.”
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