Lord Cameron has revealed he was planning to sanction two “extremist” Israeli ministers during his time as foreign secretary over their support for violent settlers and calls to block aid entering Gaza.
The former prime minister told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he had intended to target Bezalel Smotrich, Israeli finance minister, and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, as a means of putting “pressure on Netanyahu” to act within international law.
Smotrich and Ben-Gvir head a coalition of hard right parties that have propped up Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and, during the last year of the war in Gaza, pushed the most hardline positions.
Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have both called for the Palestinian residents of Gaza to leave, with latter saying the war presents an “opportunity to concentrate on encouraging the migration of the residents of Gaza.”
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Ben-Gvir has also said that departure of Palestinians and re-establishment of Israeli settlements “is a correct, just, moral and humane solution”.
Smotrich, meanwhile, recently said: “Nobody will let us cause two million civilians to die of hunger, even though it might be justified and moral, until our hostages are returned.”
Speaking to the BBC on Tuesday morning, former foreign secretary Lord Cameron said: “Before we left office I was working up sanctions on these two ministers, ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, who, when you look at what they say, they have said things like encouraging people to stop aid convoys going into Gaza, they have encouraged extreme settlers in the West Bank with the appalling things they have been carrying out.”
He said it was necessary to tell Netanyahu “when ministers in your government who are extremists and behave in this way we are prepared to use our sanctions regime to say this is simply not good enough and simply has to stop.”
Pressed on why the sanctions did not happen, Lord Cameron said it would have been “too much of a political act” during the general election campaign.
The former prime minister also said the Labour government’s partial ban on arms sales was a mistake, suggesting also that sanctions would be preferable to the “wrong path” of imposing an arms embargo.
He urged ministers to “look again at this sanctions issue”.
Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on X/Twitter here.
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