British intelligence officials warned, but the government moved forward with the sanctions

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We will recall that Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar also said the same thing. According to the article, on August 11, his British counterpart, Ed Miliband, called him to inform him that the sanctions were on their way. According to a diplomatic source who spoke to The Spectator, Sa’ar asked him to wait until after the elections. The Israeli Embassy in London sent a similar message to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: if in a few weeks another government may be formed in Israel, why not wait and see?

Last week, when British Prime Minister Andy Burnham stood in front of the British Parliament and was required to explain why his government had decided to impose sanctions on Israel, he said that he and the Foreign Minister had considered the risks, consulted with the security services and with the Foreign Office and British missions abroad, and still decided to act. The reason, he said, was the fear of the final collapse of the two-state solution, which he claimed was “dying before our eyes.” Miliband went further more, and in his message to the House of Representatives he spoke of “ethnic cleansing”.

What is more interesting is that the position that Saar expressed in the conversation with Miliband was not only the Israeli position. Simon Walters, British ambassador in Tel Aviv and former director of national security for the Middle East in the British Foreign Office, explicitly warned against quick action. According to the report, National Security Advisor Jonathan Powell also thought so. Powell, who was one of the most influential foreign policy figures in the Keir Starmer era, found himself on the losing side of the debate on the first major issue of the Burnham era.

Their fear was simple: Netanyahu reached the last line of the election in an uncomfortable political situation, and any confrontation with a foreign government could provide him with exactly what a politician in such a situation needs – an enemy from outside.

Three different sources told the Spectator that this point had been made clear to the government. A senior security source claimed that Miliband wants to see Netanyahu, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gabir out of power, but was specifically warned that the sanctions could achieve the opposite result.

Burnham and Miliband decided to go ahead with the sanctions anyway.

Intelligence services also warned of the consequences

The package they announced is broad: a ban on the import of products from the settlements, the tightening of controls on arms exports, the possibility of imposing sanctions on people and companies that carry out commercial activities in Judea and Samaria, a ban on advertising properties in the settlements in Britain, and sanctions against five people whom the British government attributes to involvement in incitement or violence against Palestinians.

According to the Spectator, it is widely believed in the British political system that local politics were also part of the story: pressure from Labor MPs and the fear of losing voters to the Green Party in the upcoming elections in Holborn and St. Pancras counties.

The British intelligence agency MI6, according to the investigation, did not tell the government unequivocally “don’t do it”. She did warn that one of the possible results would be damage to intelligence cooperation with Israel. A source close to the security services described great frustration within the organization and said that the consequences were put before the decision makers even before the announcement.

The sources who spoke with the magazine were clear on this point. If Israel has information about an Islamist attack about to take place in Britain, it will be passed on. The problem lies elsewhere. Intelligence relations do not consist only of warnings about a terrorist who is on his way to carry out an attack. Much of their value is in the continuous flow of information, names, connections, money movements, conversations, and more. When the relationship is damaged, it’s usually this information that starts to dry up.

According to British intelligence sources, it is difficult to find a replacement for Israeli capabilities in the Middle East. According to them, the intelligence services of Arab countries are not at the same level, and there is another complication here. Gulf countries themselves sometimes benefit from Israeli information that passes to them indirectly through the British.

A Labor official who spoke to senior officials in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates said that none of them thought the move increased Britain’s influence. The impression he got was the opposite. For them, London is becoming less relevant, and in this context he claimed that Saudi Arabia and Qatar are reducing investments in Britain.