作者： admin

In a landmark shift in Middle East policy, the United Kingdom has announced a series of unprecedented measures targeting Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian West Bank, marking the first time the country has explicitly barred economic engagement in these unauthorized outposts. The new policy framework comes alongside coordinated fresh sanctions targeting networks that fund and facilitate violent attacks against Palestinian communities, rolled out in partnership with key allies including France, Norway, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

Under the new policy, the UK government will issue explicit guidance warning British businesses against all economic and financial activity within Israel’s illegal West Bank settlements. Officials clarified that the measure does not alter the UK’s longstanding commitment to normal trade with Israel within its 1967 pre-war borders, drawing a clear legal and geographic distinction between legitimate trade with Israel and prohibited activity in occupied territory. In total, the UK will impose sanctions on six entities and one individual linked to settler violence and expansion.

Two of the sanctioned groups stand out as core enablers of illegal settlement activity: the Farms Association, which the UK says provides financial and logistical backing for settler farms and outposts tied to violence, intimidation and forced displacement of Palestinian residents; and Ari Artzenu, a hardline settler organization that actively promotes, funds and equips outposts linked to attacks on Palestinian communities.

Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper is set to lay out the new measures before UK Parliament on Tuesday, framing the action as a targeted response to a growing threat to regional peace. “Today we are acting with our international partners to sanction those who support and sponsor violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank,” Cooper is expected to state. “Settler expansion and violence is illegal and a fundamental threat to the viability of a two-state solution, and to long-term peace and security for Palestinians and Israelis. These measures show the UK is leading with our partners to target those who are fuelling this violence.”

The new steps come against a backdrop of mounting pressure on the UK government to take stronger action, and fall short of the full import ban on goods originating from illegal settlements that more than 230 Members of Parliament have called for this week. The gap between legislative demands and executive action marks a notable political tension: while in opposition, the current ruling Labour Party explicitly supported a full import ban, with then-Shadow Foreign Secretary Lisa Nandy arguing in 2020 that such a move required “courage that so far ministers have not been willing to show.” According to reporting from Middle East Eye, government ministers privately acknowledge that a full ban would align with the UK’s existing legal position on the status of occupied Palestinian territories, even as they have stopped short of enacting one.

The new guidance is already expected to have far-reaching ripple effects on UK domestic policy, particularly for local government pension funds. Over the past two years, dozens of UK local authorities have passed votes to divest from and boycott companies linked to Israeli occupation, war crimes or arms sales to Israel. Multiple major councils including Islington, Lewisham, Wandsworth and Caerphilly have already removed companies listed by the United Nations as operating in occupied Palestinian territories from their pension fund portfolios. However, the Labour government’s stance on local boycotts has been contradictory: earlier this year, Communities Secretary Steve Reed warned Labour-run local councils that they could face legal action for boycotting Israeli businesses, directing authorities to follow a 2016 national guidance that bans procurement boycotts against Israeli firms and businesses trading with Israel.

This latest policy announcement builds on a series of increasingly harsh UK measures against settlement activity and far-right Israeli figures in recent months. In May 2025, the Labour government imposed sanctions on multiple prominent hardline Israeli settlers in the West Bank, including Daniella Weiss, a veteran settler activist and leader of the extremist Nachala movement. Last June, the UK joined several allies in sanctioning two far-right Israeli cabinet ministers, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, over their repeated incitement to violence against Palestinian communities in both the West Bank and Gaza.

The new UK policy aligns with a landmark 2024 advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice, which ruled that Israel’s long-running occupation of Palestinian territory violates international law. The ICJ ruling explicitly clarified that it is illegal under international law for an occupying power to transfer its own civilian population into occupied territory, or to forcibly displace or deport local Palestinian populations.

Data from leading Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem underscores the urgency of the crisis the new measures target: since October 7, 2023, Israel has displaced 59 entire Palestinian communities across the occupied West Bank, comprising more than 4,000 people who have been forcibly removed from their land.

This coverage is sourced from independent reporting by Middle East Eye, which provides unmatched independent reporting and analysis on the Middle East, North Africa and broader global affairs.

On a tense Monday in the Middle East, Yemen’s Houthi movement (officially Ansar Allah) made two sweeping announcements that sent ripples across the region: the group had launched a volley of missiles toward Israel, and it was imposing a full ban on all Israeli-flagged or affiliated maritime traffic traversing the Red Sea. Israeli media later confirmed the attack, noting that all incoming projectiles had been successfully intercepted by Israeli air defenses.

This formal declaration marks the Houthi’s official re-entry into open conflict against Israel, part of the Iran-aligned bloc known as the Axis of Resistance. The group has pledged to ramp up its operations until Israel halts military actions against Palestinian groups, Lebanese militant movement Hezbollah, and Iranian targets across the region.

Hours after the Houthi statement, Esmail Qaani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force, doubled down on the bloc’s unified posture. In a public address on Monday, Qaani announced that a new coordinated “security belt” of the Axis of Resistance would stretch from the Strait of Hormuz at the entrance of the Persian Gulf all the way to the Bab al-Mandab strait at the southern mouth of the Red Sea. He praised the Houthi’s latest actions as clear proof of deepening coordination among Iran-aligned groups, warning that the entire Resistance Front would respond collectively to any Israeli or American military moves in the region, and that additional factions would join the fight if escalation continues. “From the Strait of Hormuz to Bab al-Mandab and from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea, a new security belt of the Resistance will be established,” Qaani said, adding that continued “aggression” from Israel and its allies would trigger a broader regional response.

Iran had already issued a stark warning the prior week: if Israel does not end its ongoing regional military campaign, the bloc will escalate by closing the Bab al-Mandab strait, a critical global maritime chokepoint that borders southeastern Yemen and carries roughly 10% of global maritime trade and 12% of global oil shipments. As the group that already controls most of Yemen’s Red Sea coastline and has targeted Israeli, American, and British-affiliated shipping in the region since 2023, the Houthis are the only faction in the bloc with the capacity to enforce such a closure.

The Houthi’s decision to re-escalate has exposed deep divisions within Yemeni society, where a decade of brutal civil war has already left millions grappling with humanitarian catastrophe and displacement. For some Yemenis, like 48-year-old Sanaa resident and independent food distributor Ahmed Al-Faqeeh, the move is a necessary and honorable stand in solidarity with co-religionists under attack across Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran.

Al-Faqeeh, who has no affiliation with the Houthis or any other Yemeni political faction, says the ongoing violence against Palestinian and allied groups demands a unified response from all Muslims. “It isn’t in accordance with Islam or humanity to see our brothers being subjected to genocide and remain silent,” he told Middle East Eye in an interview. “All Muslim countries have a duty and must participate in this fight against the primary enemy of Muslims, Israel.” Al-Faqeeh has already taken personal action, boycotting all goods from companies linked to Israel, and says he is proud his country has chosen to take a public stand. Even after experiencing the 2025 Israeli air strikes on Sanaa that killed multiple senior government officials and civilians in retaliation for prior Houthi operations, Al-Faqeeh says past losses should not deter the group from continued action. He points to the 2023 Houthi Red Sea shipping campaign, which included the seizure of the Israeli-affiliated cargo ship Galaxy Leader and its 25-member crew (who were ultimately released in January 2025 via Omani mediation) as proof that Yemeni action has had an outsized impact that other regional nations have failed to match. Al-Faqeeh added that Yemen has held a consistent opposition to Israel since the 1973 October War, when the former People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen collaborated with Egypt to enforce a Red Sea naval blockade on Israel targeting oil and cargo shipments bound for the southern Israeli port of Eilat.

But for many other Yemenis, who have already lived through 11 years of civil war that has killed an estimated 377,000 people and displaced more than 4.5 million, the prospect of dragging Yemen into a wider regional conflict is a nightmare they cannot bear. Ahmed Daghez, a 39-year-old bus driver who travels regularly between Houthi-held Sanaa and government-controlled Taiz, has seen the human cost of war firsthand: his childhood home in Taiz now sits in an active frontline conflict zone, and he has not been able to access it for years. “Eleven years of internal war is more than enough. The damage that has already occurred will take decades to rebuild, so we don’t need to be involved in a regional war that could have an even worse impact on us,” Daghez said. He still remembers the terror of the 2025 Israeli air strikes on Sanaa, and fears Israel could expand its attacks on Yemeni territory if the Houthis continue their campaign. “Wars bring nothing good; it is simply a source of misery. If the Houthis escalate further in this war, they could drag Yemen into a regional conflict that the country simply cannot afford,” he added.

Critics of the Houthi move go further, arguing that the group is acting as a proxy for Iranian regional interests rather than prioritizing the well-being of the Yemeni people. Mohammed Ali, a veteran Yemeni journalist, argues that the Houthis’ decision to re-escalate directly follows Iran’s threat to close the Bab al-Mandab, and that all key strategic decisions are made in Tehran, not Sanaa. “As a Yemeni, I don’t feel the Houthis care about us; they only care about their own interests. Iran helped them seize control of northern Yemen, and now they must serve Iranian interests,” Ali said. “The decision-making power is not in the Houthis’ hands, but in Iran’s. This was clearly reflected in the recent threats made by Iran.” Ali notes that the Bab al-Mandab has become an increasingly critical energy shipping route in recent months, as exports through Iran-controlled Strait of Hormuz have dropped sharply amid ongoing regional tensions. He predicts that the Houthis will follow Iran’s lead and announce a temporary pause on Red Sea attacks in the coming days, pointing out that even after Iran announced a temporary halt to its own strikes against Israel on Monday morning, the Houthis launched another attack overnight. Late Monday, the Israeli military confirmed it had intercepted a suspicious aerial target originating from Yemen over the southern city of Eilat. Separately, Saudi Arabia announced Monday afternoon that a ballistic missile launched from Yemen had landed in an unpopulated area near the Saudi-Yemen border, after veering off course while en route to another country in the region.

A recent peer collaborative study has uncovered far-reaching environmental contamination stemming from ongoing Israeli military operations in Gaza, with dangerous “forever chemicals” spreading across agricultural lands and water sources in southern Israel, miles away from the conflict zone. The research was carried out by a cross-institutional team of specialists from four leading Israeli bodies: Hebrew University, the country’s Ministry of Health, the Volcani Institute, and the Southern Arava Agricultural Research Organisation.

The investigation identified per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a class of persistent synthetic industrial compounds, in potato samples harvested from dozens of cultivated fields located along Israel’s border with Gaza. Beyond agricultural produce, detectable levels of PFAS pollution were also recorded in soil and groundwater wells as far as 19 kilometers from the Gaza boundary. Research teams concluded that the chemical contaminants were most likely dispersed by wind currents after being released from military explosives detonated during Israel’s two-year military campaign in Gaza, laying bare the cross-border environmental fallout of the ongoing conflict.

Widely nicknamed “forever chemicals” for their ability to resist breakdown in both natural ecosystems and the human body, PFAS pose well-documented severe long-term health risks. Multiple public health studies have linked prolonged exposure to certain PFAS compounds to irreversible damage to reproductive and immune system function, abnormal developmental outcomes for fetuses, and a significantly elevated risk of several aggressive forms of cancer. Prior to this new finding, national data already showed that PFAS contamination is a widespread issue across Israel: roughly 15% of the country’s drinking water wells and 70% of its agricultural water sources carry PFAS residues, forcing authorities to shut down a number of major public water wells in recent years.

Beyond toxic chemical contamination, the conflict has also generated unprecedented carbon emissions that exacerbate the global climate crisis. Analysis published by the Social Science Research Network estimates that greenhouse gas emissions from the first 15 months of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza alone exceed the total annual emissions of more than 100 sovereign nations. When accounting for the full climate cost of the conflict – including emissions from the destruction of infrastructure, debris removal, and eventual post-conflict reconstruction – the total carbon footprint is projected to surpass 31 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. That figure is higher than the entire 2023 annual emissions of countries including Costa Rica, Afghanistan, and Zimbabwe.

Cumulatively, researchers calculate that the total climate impact of Israel’s recent military operations in Gaza, Lebanon, and earlier confrontations in Yemen and Iran equals the annual emissions output of 84 full-scale gas-fired power plants. This pattern of environmental harm tied to Israeli occupation and military action stretches back decades. Following the 1948 Nakba, when Zionist forces ethnically cleansed hundreds of Palestinian communities and destroyed hundreds of villages, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) planted extensive monoculture pine forests across the ruins of these displaced communities. A 2013 investigation by the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel confirmed that these JNF projects caused catastrophic, long-lasting damage to native biodiversity in the region. In 2021, Palestinian agricultural officials told Middle East Eye that decades of environmental disruption have led to a sharp, steady decline in Palestinian agricultural output over the past ten years. Gaza’s already fragile environment and public health infrastructure have been disproportionately impacted by decades of Israeli occupation, military action, and climate change.

This reporting was produced by Middle East Eye, an independent outlet providing specialized, in-depth coverage of the Middle East and North Africa region.