Boris Johnson, the former UK prime minister, has denounced Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband's decision to impose new sanctions on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, calling the move "ridiculous and disgraceful" in a newspaper column published this week.
Miliband announced the sanctions in the House of Commons. The West Bank is Palestinian territory that Israel has occupied since 1967, and hundreds of thousands of Israelis have built settlements there that most of the international community, including Britain, regards as illegal.
Johnson wrote that the sanctions are meant to push Israel toward a two-state solution, under which Israel and a self-governing Palestinian state would exist side by side. To test whether that goal makes sense, he set out a hypothetical: suppose Israel bowed to the pressure, sent in bulldozers, evicted the settlers by force if necessary, and handed full security responsibility to the Palestinians. He stressed this scenario would never happen in the real world, but said it was worth thinking through, because he argued the experiment has already been tried once, in Gaza.
In 2005, Israel's government withdrew all Jewish settlers from Gaza under international pressure, in some cases dragging them out physically, Johnson wrote. About 8,500 Israelis were removed and their homes demolished, and control of the Gaza Strip was handed to the Palestinians, and in practice to Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement that has governed the territory since taking it over.
The 2005 Gaza withdrawal
Johnson wrote that Gaza had strong potential for development, with a young population, Mediterranean beaches and offshore gas reserves capable of generating billions of dollars in revenue over decades. He said Hamas could have focused on jobs, growth and clean, safe streets. "Did they hell," he wrote.
The water park story
Johnson illustrated his argument with the story of the Crazy Water Aqua Fun Park, built in 2010 by a former Hamas minister using foreign development funds. Its slides propelled visitors through giant tubes before they plunged, screaming, into splash pools, Johnson wrote, comparing it to the water parks families everywhere enjoy. The park grew popular and employed more than 100 people, he wrote, until Hamas objected to men and women mixing together in swimwear and shut it down. Soon after, Johnson wrote, 40 masked men set the park on fire in the middle of the night.
Johnson said the episode symbolizes how Hamas has run Gaza's economy, squandering billions of dollars in foreign aid from the European Union, Britain and other donors. He wrote that Hamas leaders either "trousered the money themselves" or spent it on weapons, and that instead of building sanitation or transport systems, they spent the aid digging tunnels used to attack Israel.
October 7 and the case against a West Bank state
Johnson pointed to the October 7, 2023 attack, in which Hamas fighters crossed into Israel on motorbikes and microlights, calling it the biggest and most horrific atrocity against Jewish people since the Holocaust. He wrote that no one in Israel is "remotely interested" right now in repeating that outcome in the West Bank, and said this history is why no party with a realistic chance of forming a government in Israel's forthcoming elections, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or the opposition, is contemplating a Palestinian state with control over its own security.
Johnson said Israeli attitudes could shift if Hamas genuinely renounced violence and gave up its weapons, adding that he was "not completely pessimistic" that such a change could happen.
Criticism of the Labour government
Johnson noted that the sanctions on Israeli settlements are the seventh package the Labour government has imposed since the October 7 attack, and that all seven have targeted Israel rather than Hamas. He linked this to what he described as Labour becoming a "Corbynista party," a reference to former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, pursuing what Johnson called "radical and sectarian policies" to protect its vote on the political left. He cited planned legislation on so-called Islamophobia as part of the same pattern, arguing that since the term means fear of Islam, "the biggest Islamophobes are in the Labour Party."
Johnson wrote that Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham feared a backlash in mosques across the 57 Labour constituencies where more than 15 percent of the population is Muslim, and suggested Labour was also trying to head off a political challenge from Zack Polanski, who leads the Green Party of England and Wales.
Johnson said the sanctions amounted to an act of appeasement that would only invite further demands from what he called a growing movement that would not be satisfied until the Jewish homeland was removed, in its own words, "from the River to the Sea." He predicted the government's next step would be to accuse Israel of "genocide," a term he said would be an abuse of language and an insult to those who died in the Holocaust.
What the sanctions will achieve, according to Johnson
Johnson argued the sanctions would not help a single Palestinian farmer or business, and could instead cost jobs in the occupied territories. He said their main effect on Israeli politics would be to strengthen the country's political right and deepen distrust of Britain even among Israeli moderates.
He wrote that Burnham had pushed Britain "to the outer fringes of the debate" in order "to feed the Corbynista crocodile," and called the sanctions "shameful."
