Jennifer Larbie, Christian Aid’s head of UK influencing, described the decision to sanction so few entities as “derisory” and a clear example of the UK government doing “too little too late” while Palestinians are forced from their land.
This sentiment was echoed by Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative. He told
Al Jazeera Arabic that Western leaders are facing unprecedented public backlash for their ties to Israel.
“These governments are trying to cover up their shortcomings with low-value measures,” Barghouti said, arguing that the sanctions reflect a need to manage public anger rather than a genuine shift in state policy.
He stressed that the Israeli government itself is the entity that plans, funds, and executes settlement expansion.
Israel has undermined the Oslo Accords, which called for the freezing of settlements. At the time of the Oslo Accords in the early 1990s, some 250,000 settlers lived in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. The settlement population has now
grown to more than 700,000, while some three million Palestinians live in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.