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The U.K. announced it is banning imports from Israeli settlements and barring British companies from providing services that help expand them.
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Britain is taking new action against Israel over its expanding settlements in the West Bank
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and Israel is already hitting back. The British government is banning imports from Israeli
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settlements there and will also bar British companies from providing services that help
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build or expand them. That includes things like financing, construction, and real estate
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Britain now also says it considers Israel's occupation of the West Bank illegal
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not just the settlements. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced the shift in Parliament Tuesday
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accusing some Israeli settlers of carrying out what he called ethnic cleansing of Palestinians
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We call out what is unlawful. We act on the import of goods from illegal settlements
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We ban advertising of illegal settlements. We act on services to prevent new settlement expansion
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We act on settler violence. We support accountability for what has happened in Gaza
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and we pledge to galvanize the international community to confront the ongoing and urgent
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humanitarian crisis France and Canada are taking similar action and several other countries have backed further restrictions The British ban is expected to take six to nine months to go into effect
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Israel condemned the move and announced its own response. It plans to close the British consulate
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in Jerusalem and bar a dozen British lawmakers and other UK citizens from entering Israel
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The Trump administration is also pushing back. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the US will
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not follow Britain's lead. And U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has warned Britain it could
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face retaliation from the U.S. And I guess a big question is, why put this kind of pressure on
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Israel? Is the U.K. also putting the same kind of very strong sanction on North Korea, on China
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on Russia? I don't know why Israel is being singled out for this kind of attention
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Britain says the measures are aimed at Israeli settlements, not a broader boycott of Israel
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And it says the goal is to stop settlement expansion from further undercutting the possibility of a future Palestinian state
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