Ed Miliband, Britain's Foreign Secretary, summoned Israel's senior diplomat in London yesterday and promised sanctions within weeks. (Israel's Housing Ministry had opened bidding the day before on about 1,200 homes at E1, the open ground between Jerusalem and the Israeli city of Maale Adumim, with bids closing eight days before Israelis vote on 27 October.) What London is answering is a sovereignty claim every Israeli government since Rabin has made.
Miliband called that an "unacceptable and destructive act" and pledged "a comprehensive set of measures," with targeted sanctions on people who take part in Israeli building in Judea and Samaria. He said separately that the measures come within weeks. Germany, France, and Italy had already warned their own companies off the bidding. The UN Secretary-General's spokesman said E1 would "effectively sever the connection between occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank."
London wants the tender pulled and the building stopped. Every Israeli government since Rabin proposed that corridor in 1994 has kept it on the map — and yet none of them ever sold a plot there. The closing date is what is new.
It falls inside an Israeli election campaign, so London is drafting sanctions against a government that will not be the one in office when they arrive.
Below the line: the week's deployable language — what to say when a reporter asks whether E1 buries the two-state solution, how to answer the donor asking whether British sanctions reach our giving, the claims you'll field on the Military Advocate General's first public accounting since October 7, and the traps that lose the room. Members get the full brief.
The Jewish State — Mitzpe's eight-session live course on Israeli history from the Mandate to October 7, taught the way the brief reads. Cohort 1: eight Sundays from Oct 11. mitzpe.org/the-jewish-state