Has Burnham just started his first row with Trump?

Jon Sopel (0:02)

This is a Global Production. What we have seen in the past few months is horrific.

Emily Maitlis (0:09)

There are the fireworks of Ed Miliband's announcement, which for many people in this country won't really feel that shocking.

Jon Sopel (0:16)

Why are these people, these Palestinians, who've lived and worked on these lands for hundreds and hundreds of years, being driven out of their homes? The forces of law and order in a democratic country like Israel are standing by and apparently letting it happen.

Emily Maitlis (0:31)

Totally symbolic, and yet the response from Israel has been pretty vociferous.

Jon Sopel (0:37)

There is a lot of fear, and the fear will be that it will make it worse as a result of these actions.

Emily Maitlis (0:43)

You do not want Burnham, inadvertently, to be the one that gets everyone's heckles up in Israel, so they start going, oh shit, we need to back Netanyahu.

Jon Sopel (0:52)

He is picking this fight. Boy, this is a fight that he has picked, and I think it is significant.

Ed Miliband (0:58)

Our argument is not with the people of Israel, with whom the UK has unshakable bonds. Our argument is with the conduct of its government.

And I also want to say emphatically to people in Britain, and indeed across the world, holding British Jews responsible for the actions of the Israeli government is anti-Semitism, plain and simple.

Emily Maitlis (1:22)

That is the Foreign Secretary, Ed Miliband, talking in his own words as a proud British Jew, as he simultaneously announces that he is going to sanction Israel, more specifically Israeli goods made in settler communities, which are harming the livelihoods of thousands of Palestinians.

Jon Sopel (1:44)

But is this just setting the stage for a major bust up with Donald Trump, whose administration opposes any sanctions against companies operating in the West Bank? Welcome to The News Agents.

Ed Miliband (2:02)

The News Agents.

Jon Sopel (2:03)

It's Jon.

Emily Maitlis (2:04)

It's Maitlis. And remember when Andy Burnham first became the Prime Minister? One of the very first things he said, one of his first criticisms of his predecessor Keir Starmer, was on how Starmer had handled his relations with Israel and the whole question of Gaza. And he essentially apologized and said, we didn't go far enough, we didn't call it out, we didn't do enough.

I'm mentioning that because I think this sets the stage for what has happened today, which sounds extraordinarily dramatic, but actually I think is part of the trajectory of where Burnham wants to be with his party and with this country in terms of calling out Israel's actions. And today we heard from Ed Miliband in this incredibly personal and autobiographical speech which talks about growing up as a young boy and his sort of love of Israel and his experiences of this pioneering country in the 60s and 70s and comparing it to what it has become today in his eyes. And essentially the British government has now concluded that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank perpetrated by settler terrorists and they are acting on that by imposing sanctions on the goods coming out of those settler areas of the West Bank.

Jon Sopel (3:33)

Yeah, and the settler areas, I mean, you know, for those kind of unfamiliar with the geography, I mean, until 1967, it was part of Jordan in the Six Day War, it became part of Israel and there was it by international law, it was said there should be no building in the West Bank and the number of settlers has multiplied massively. By doing that, what you achieve is you make a two state solution ever harder and ever less viable because you've got Jewish settlements built all over the West Bank and therefore, for a two state solution to happen, you would have to tell all those settlers they've got to go, they've got to leave.

Emily Maitlis (4:14)

You're essentially depopulating the area of anyone but Israelis.

Jon Sopel (4:18)

And what we have seen in the past few months is horrific in the sense of settlers, either with the support or the acquiescence, and maybe that's kind of a distinction without a difference, of the IDF, of the Israeli Defense Forces, who have stood by and watched these kind of zealots, and it's hard to describe them as anything else, where maybe terrorists is another word used to describe them, as these zealots have gone in and said, you know what, this is our land, this belongs to us. Well, until 1967, it didn't. And you can go back thousands of years and say, well, it's part of Judea and Samaria, and therefore it's part of our historical biblical land. Everyone has got a claim to that land.