"Not Enough?" | Rory and Alastair Challenge Ed Miliband on Israel-Palestine

Rory Stewart (0:01)

Last week, for the first time, the UK Foreign Secretary has announced sanctions against Israeli settlers, and that new Foreign Secretary, Ed Miliband, has come out with one of the clearest boldest statements about the illegality of the occupation. He's a new Foreign Secretary, barely seven weeks into the role, and we have him here with us today. We've received a thousand questions from listeners coming in for our new Foreign Secretary. We're very lucky to have him with us on the show. We're going to be asking, how did he arrive at this position? What does it mean? Will he go further? And above all, we're going to step back and we're going to ask, how much difference really can Britain make to the world? How much difference can it make to peace in Israel-Palestine? Can it join Mark Carney in redefining a new alliance that could have an independent voice from the US and China and stand up for the values we care about and confront the incredible crises which are accelerating all around us?

Alastair Campbell (1:00)

So, Ed, we had well over a thousand questions from our listeners, and a lot of them were, I'd say, expressing support for the measures that you announced in Parliament recently, but maybe want you to go further. David, shouldn't the British government sanction the Israeli government that gives political and military support to the settlers and not just the settlers themselves? Why make the distinction when it is one system of occupation which the UK now acknowledges is illegal?

Ed Miliband (1:24)

Can I come to the question and just sort of do a slightly bigger picture? Because I think it's important to contextualise this.

What are we trying to do? We are trying to uphold the long-standing vision of successive British governments for a two-state solution, and we see the two-state solution, as your listeners will know, being destroyed by the facts on the ground. I think over, you know, when I became Foreign Secretary, and I talked to Andy about this, we both agreed that mouthing platitudes about the two-state solution, while seeing it destroyed, was just no good.

Alastair Campbell (1:56)

But haven't you just done that?

Ed Miliband (1:59)

And therefore, all of the measures we were about were to make a difference to that. And the sanctions regime we're bringing in is deliberately targeted at the illegal occupation, as we confirmed with the judgment that I talked about in parliament. And it's not targeted at de-legitimizing in any way the state of Israel. And so that's the distinction I want to draw. And so the answer to your listeners' question is, we have sanctioned individual members of the Israeli government, Ben Gavir and Smotraich, for the comments they have made and for what they've encouraged. But part of this is, we want to have a relationship with Israel.

We are trying to de-legitimize the occupation.

Rory Stewart (2:46)

So Foreign Secretary, this is a question coming up.

Ed Miliband (2:48)

Call me Ed, I think.

Rory Stewart (2:49)

Thank you. I'm very uncomfortable.

Alastair Campbell (2:51)

He doesn't like doing that.

Rory Stewart (2:52)

I don't like doing that.

Alastair Campbell (2:53)

He respects the position, not the person. Maybe it's that, Ed, even if he apologized to you on air last week. I know. I know.

Rory Stewart (2:59)

I love the person, but I feel uncomfortable calling you Ed. He's known you for so long. Okay. All right. I'll call you Ed. Foreign Secretary, stroke Ed, which you're very kindly encouraging me to ask you. We've had a number of questions which I think follow on a little bit from what you've said. I think the number of it is this, that it's very difficult to draw a clear line between the Israeli government, the settlements, and the legal occupation. Just to put myself in for a second, I felt when I was a junior minister in the Foreign Office, it took me some time to realize that what we were saying in Britain, these are all illegal settlements, this is occupied Palestinian territory, and which we were saying to the Israeli government, was not the way that a lot of my colleagues in the Israeli government saw it. In fact, actually, they distinguished between settlements that they felt were legal, settlements that they called outposts. They never used the word occupied Palestinian territory.

I wonder whether there hasn't been a weird ambiguity at the heart of our relationship with this for decades now.

Ed Miliband (3:57)

Well, maybe that is true, but I suppose what really struck me in preparing to make this statement is, some people didn't like what we said, but I think what was so clear was the status quo is not working. The status quo and E1, which your listeners may be familiar with, which is this settlement expansion tender was announced in August, had long been seen as a red line for the international community on these questions because it basically would split off East Jerusalem from the West Bank and really makes a Palestinian state unviable. I agree with you that in some of the conversations I had in the run-up to this statement, some people would say to me, well, some settlements we don't like, but some settlements may well be part of a future Israel on the basis of a negotiation. But to say something might be part of a future two-state solution through a negotiated settlement is very different than something that is occupied. Just this point on the illegality of the occupation, I mean, it's a big step that we've taken. The ICJ took a view on this in 2024