Settler Violence in the West Bank and the UK Settlement Import Ban

Palestinian communities across the occupied West Bank are being driven from their land by armed settlers, in what the Foreign Secretary himself has called ethnic cleansing. Homes are torched, livestock killed and entire Bedouin villages emptied, while the perpetrators act with near-total impunity.

On 8 September, Britain finally moved: a ban on all goods from illegal Israeli settlements and on UK firms financing, building or advertising for them. But the ban won’t take effect for six to nine months, and it leaves investment untouched. Is this real accountability, or another exercise in looking busy while the occupation’s economy keeps running?

MEMO’s Nasim Ahmed hosts a panel of leading legal and political experts to confront the violence, name who is responsible in law, and ask what Britain owes Palestinians now.

Speakers

Dr Alice Panepinto (Queen’s University Belfast) on forced displacement and the impunity that fuels it
Dr Sai Englert (Leiden University) on why settler violence is a feature of the colonial project, not a bug
Dr Mais Qandeel (University of Galway and Örebro University) on why settler attacks are acts of the Israeli state, and what that demands of the UK
Dr Toufic Haddad (author of Palestine Ltd) on whether the ban is substance or spin

WATCH: MEMO in Conversation with Benjamin Moser