Sanctions, policy, and moral choices

International relations and the moral choices that go with them are complex. On what basis do we continue to trade with other countries with very different values from our own, and at what point do we cry ‘Enough is enough!’ and use economic sanctions to challenge what we regard as immorality? And what is our ethical basis, as a post-Christendom nation, for doing so?

During a speech in the House of Commons on March 1, 1848, Lord Palmerston said:

We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.

which is often shortened to ‘we have no permanent allies, only permanent interests.’ This can sound like offering a consistent ethnical approach to such questions—but perhaps it is just about putting Britain first, and protecting our own interests ahead of others.

If the present government was to decide that we should impose sanctions on one of our trading partners, who should we prioritise? The list of those we trade with who have abused human rights is long, so I have drawn up this table.

I wonder if, dear reader, you were aware of the extent of human rights violations in these countries, and the extent of our positive trading relations with them. I am not sure I was before drawing up this table. But in fact these abuses are well known by governments; they just never get reported in our press. The US State Department’s country-report system, for example, documents human-rights issues across Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, Oman, India, Bangladesh and others.

But it gets worse. Not only are we not thinking about pursuing sanctions on any of these countries, we are seeking to development appeasing relations with them. Britain is currently pursuing a Gulf Cooperation Council free-trade agreement encompassing Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The agreement was concluded in May 2026, although it is not yet in force. I suspect this is part of our response to the loss of trade with the EU following Brexit.

Human Rights Watch specifically criticises this approach, arguing that the proposed UK-GCC agreement lacks explicit human-rights protections and that governments continue to put trade and strategic interests ahead of human-rights concerns. And this not to mention the appalling decision to go ahead with the 2022 football World Cup in Qatar, when it was known that the building of stadiums was based on abuse of workers. Migrant workers faced wage theft, unexplained deaths, dangerous working conditions and continued exploitation after the tournament—but not a word from our government (to my knowledge).

If we look more carefully at a few of these, the situation is even worse.

In China, Human Rights Watch describes systematic denial of freedom of expression, association, assembly and religion, repression in Xinjiang (home of the Uyghurs) and Tibet, and the dismantling of civil liberties in Hong Kong. Yet Britain had £105.3bn of trade with China in 2025, and the Government’s own Trade Strategy explicitly says that developing the economic relationship with China is in the UK’s national interest. (I hear echoes of Palmerston…) Britain is also actually licensing strategic exports to China: China received 622 permanent standard export licences in 2025, second only to the US.

In Saudi Arabia, Human Rights Watch reports at least 322 executions by early December 2025, including people convicted following trials raising serious fair-trial concerns, alongside arbitrary detention, suppression of expression and extensive migrant-worker abuses. Nevertheless, UK-Saudi trade was £17.2bn in the four quarters to June 2025, including £14.2bn of British exports. There is no comprehensive British economic sanctions regime against Saudi Arabia.

In UAE, Human Rights Watch reports the imprisonment of political dissidents and human-rights defenders, unfair mass trials, migrant-worker exploitation and allegations concerning UAE support for Sudan’s RSF who have been documented as committing war crimes on a vast scale in Sudan’s civil war.

With India, Britain has just entered a new trade agreement which came into force on 15th July, and UK-India trade was already £47.2bn in the four quarters to June 2025. This is despite substantial international criticism concerning religious freedom, treatment of minorities, Kashmir, freedom of expression and civil-society restrictions.

In Qatar, Human Rights Watch documents continuing migrant-worker exploitation, wage theft and dangerous conditions; discrimination against women; criminalisation of same-sex relations; restrictions on freedom of expression and religion; and arbitrary detention. Yet Britain continues substantial trade with Qatar—£6.1bn in the four quarters to June 2025—including £4.6bn of British exports. In relation to the conflict in Israel/Palestine, Qatar is a significant player. It has for many years hosted and protected the leaders of Hamas (with their considerable wealth); it has supplied Hamas with $1.8 billion over recent years, much of which was spent building a terror tunnel network one third larger than the London Underground; and it has filled social media with pro-Hamas propaganda, through funding Al Jazeera, and ‘news’ services on line such as Middle Eastern Eye (don’t be fooled if you have seen such sites!).

Yesterday, the Labour Government announced that it was putting in place sanctions on a trading partner because of concerns about the ethics of its actions.

Which of these countries do you think they chose?

None of the above, but Israel, the only democracy in the region, and the only one which gives full democratic rights to its minorities, including 2.1 million Palestinian Arabs, the only one which grants equal rights to women and sexual minorities, and in fact the only one which is a functioning democracy.

(It might be claimed that we have a historical interest in this region. But we have a historic interest or role in many of the other countries listed above—and as Simon Sebag Montefiore highlights in his remarkable book The Cauldron, we were involved in the formation of all of the states in the region.)

Two reasons have been given. The first concerns the further building in Zone C in Judea and Samaria/the West Bank, in particular building in the E1 area next to Jerusalem. This is significant for Israel, since it would link up the city of Ma’ale Adumim with Jerusalem itself. It is highly contentious because it would block easy access between Zone A areas to the north and south, and divide PLA territory.

Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband claims that this is a sign that the prospect of a two-state solution is being destroyed by Israel changing facts on the ground. What he fails to mention is the historic problem with the two-state solution: that in the past, Israel has repeatedly accepted a two-state solution, but that the Arabs (who then in the late 1960s called themselves ‘Palestinians’) repeatedly rejected it—in 1947, in the Khartoum declaration in 1967, in the 2000 Camp David summit (chaired by Bill Clinton—who has stated very clearly in public why he things the talks failed), in the 2008 offer by Ehud Olmert. The current arrangements in the area were agreed as part of the 1995 Oslo Accords, which were only intended to be in place for five years until the Camp David agreements. But resolving these was sabotaged by the Second Intifada, in which more than 1,000 Israelis were killed and 8,000 maimed in a campaign of suicide bombing. None of this merited mention by Miliband.

And of course October 7th 2023 was the clearest rejection of a two-state solution, an action which polls showed was supported by 83% of those living in the West Bank. We need also to be clear that the Kairos II statement, debated in General Synod last July, also effectively rejects a two-state solution by arguing that the 1950 Law of Return, which is the very thing that makes Israel a Jewish homeland as well as a western democratic state, is racist and must be dismantled.

The second issue that Miliband mention was the ‘terrorist’ action of settlers. It is very hard for us to know exactly what is happening; I do not recall the BBC reporting of provocative Palestinian violence which certainly takes place. But the cutting off of water supply for the village of Fasayil is a poignant case. Reuters reported this as a spiteful and cruel action by settlers, claiming their religious and historic rights; some pro-Israel campaigners online claimed that the Bedouin in the village had been stealing this water for twenty years, and the settlers were just restoring the historic situation; but Reuters reported seeing historic documents supporting the Bedouin case. I think Reuters are correct here, and it illustrates that there is unacceptable violence and coercion happening against Palestinians.

So how should Britain respond to this, and the diminishing possibilities of a settlement in the region? There seem to me to be several questions.

First, given the list above, why is this particular situation dominating both the Government and discussion in the media?

Secondly, our approach to perceived injustices at this level has been to put private pressure in discussions, rather than reach for sanctions. Why has that not been happening at all (for the most part) in other situations, and why has that not been the approach here?

Thirdly, why is Britain’s approach to Israel so different from its approach to other much more serious violations of human rights elsewhere? The IHRA definition of antisemitism includes ‘Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.’ How can the Labour Government avoid the accusation of antisemitism in its disproportionate approach here?

The stated aim of the leaders of Hamas is that October 7th would provoke Israeli retaliation which would turn the world against it, and this has been supported by a massive social media campaign. How can the Government avoid the accusation that it is helping Hamas to fulfil this aim?

And there are similar question to ask of the Church of England. Why has it demonstrated such a disproportionate interest in this situation? As I said in my speech in Synod:

How can we claim to stand against antisemitism when para 3.3 [of Kairos II]: “We consider the State of Israel, established in 1948, to be a continuation of that same colonial enterprise built on racism and the ideology of ethnic or religious superiority.”

How do we avoid the charge of anti-Israel bias, when we single out for censure the one democracy in the region — the only one that protects the rights of women and of gay people — yet have never once debated the oppression of women in the Arab world, the suffering of the Kurds, the Yazidi, the Uyghurs, the Yemenis, or the Christians of Nigeria?

How can we call this ethnic cleansing, when Israel’s first leaders urged Palestinians to stay and build a shared state, when 2.1 million Palestinians hold full democratic rights in Israel today—and when Jews were ethnically cleansed from every inch of the Palestinian Territories, and 900,000 more driven from neighbouring Arab states? As a Synod we were silent then. Did we protest then? Did we propose a debate, or a diocesan motion?

Yesterday was a dark day for our country, and, despite Ed Miliband’s claims, will make worse the already rising antisemitism in our land.