Pressure on the Israeli regime intensified on two fronts in Europe this week, as street protesters in London and a coalition of rights organisations in Paris pushed their governments to abandon empty rhetoric and impose real costs on the occupation — a sign that the campaign to isolate the Zionist entity is gaining ground inside its traditional Western strongholds.
London: “Stop all arms sales, apply meaningful sanctions”
Pro-Palestinian activists gathered outside the British Foreign Office on Friday, demanding the UK government impose sanctions on Israel over its genocidal war on Gaza and force the lifting of restrictions on humanitarian aid, Anadolu reported. Tens of thousands of tents sheltering displaced families in Gaza have recently been flooded as the regime continues to weaponise aid entry.
Waving Palestinian flags, demonstrators chanted “We want justice, we want action, we want boycott, we want sanctions,” “From London to Palestine, occupation is a crime,” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
In one of the protest’s most striking moments, a message was projected directly onto the walls of the Foreign Office itself: “We demand a full inquiry into British complicity in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.”
Chris Nineham, vice-chair of the Stop the War Coalition, vowed the movement would not relent. “We will not stop protesting until this nightmare (in Gaza) is over,” he said, calling on London to halt all arms sales to Israel. Nineham argued that Israel and its Western patrons are growing increasingly isolated as global opposition to their wars mounts, noting that 60 percent of Americans now disapprove of Israel’s conduct in the Middle East — sentiment he said contributed to one of the worst midterm defeats suffered by a US president.
Fran Heathcote, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, said Palestinians face destitution and flooding after three years of war and genocide. “Yet again we’ve seen the Israeli government blocking aid,” she said, accusing the regime of using the withholding of humanitarian assistance as “a tool of genocide.”
Her message to the government was blunt: “Stop all arms sales to Israel and apply meaningful sanctions.” While welcoming the new UK government’s sanctions targeting “settler terrorism” in the occupied West Bank, Heathcote stressed that the terror campaign is not the work of rogue individuals — “it is enabled and supported” by the Israeli government and army themselves.
Paris: A settlement trade ban heads to the floor
Across the Channel, the pressure has moved from the streets into parliament. Thirteen French NGOs — including Association France Palestine Solidarité (AFPS), Oxfam France, and the Human Rights League (LDH) — have called on lawmakers to ban the import, purchase, and sale of goods produced in illegal Israeli settlements across the occupied West Bank, Press TV reported.
The draft legislation, which would also prohibit services contributing to settlement construction and expansion, cleared a parliamentary committee on Monday and is set for debate in the full parliament on November 19. It already enjoys the backing of more than 100 lawmakers across eight parliamentary blocs.
“Trade with the settlements masks a humanitarian reality that cannot be ignored: The lives of Palestinians are being gradually stifled by the occupation and the settlements,” said Cécile Duflot, executive director of Oxfam France.
LDH president Nathalie Tehio framed the coming vote in stark terms: French lawmakers must decide whether “they align with international law or oppose it.”
The organisations voiced frustration that France’s diplomatic recognition of the State of Palestine has yet to be matched by tangible action, urging the government to instruct its parliamentary majority to back the bill.
The record of the occupation
The numbers behind the legislation are damning. Some 750,000 Israeli settlers now live in 156 illegal settlements and 360 outposts across the occupied West Bank, including East al-Quds. Since October 7, 2023, Israeli forces and settlers have carried out 62,916 attacks against Palestinians, their land, and their property, according to the Palestinian Colonisation and Wall Resistance Commission.
In June, fourteen UN special rapporteurs warned that surging “settler terrorism,” backed and enabled by Israeli officials, poses a grave threat to Palestinian communities. And in July 2024, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s decades-long occupation illegal and ordered the evacuation of all settlements.
With London’s streets demanding an arms embargo and Paris preparing to outlaw settlement commerce, the message from Europe’s publics is unmistakable: recognition without sanctions is complicity by another name. The November 19 vote will be the first test of whether France’s government intends to listen — or to keep shielding the occupation while the resistance and the world’s free people close the circle around it.
Reference: ABNA24