The U.K. sus­pend­ed free trade talks with Is­rael on Tues­day and hit West Bank set­tlers with sanc­tions, less than a day af­ter vow­ing “con­crete ac­tions” if Is­rael didn’t stop its new mil­i­tary of­fen­sive in Gaza.

Pres­sure from close al­lies is mount­ing on Is­rael fol­low­ing a near­ly three-month block­ade of sup­plies in­to Gaza that led to famine warn­ings. Even the Unit­ed States, a staunch al­ly, has voiced con­cerns over the hunger cri­sis.

British For­eign Sec­re­tary David Lam­my said the gov­ern­ment couldn’t con­tin­ue talks on up­grad­ing its ex­ist­ing trade agree­ment with an Is­raeli gov­ern­ment pur­su­ing what he called egre­gious poli­cies in Gaza and the Is­raeli-oc­cu­pied West Bank.

“His­to­ry will judge them,” Lam­my said. “Block­ing aid. Ex­pand­ing the war. Dis­miss­ing the con­cerns of your friends and part­ners. This is in­de­fen­si­ble. And it must stop.”

Is­raeli’s am­bas­sador to the U.K., Tzipi Ho­tove­ly, was sum­moned to the For­eign Of­fice, where Mid­dle East min­is­ter Hamish Fal­con­er said he would call the 11-week block­ade of aid to Gaza “cru­el and in­de­fen­si­ble.”

The Eu­ro­pean Union’s for­eign pol­i­cy chief Ka­ja Kallas said the bloc was re­view­ing an EU pact gov­ern­ing trade ties with Is­rael over its con­duct of the war in Gaza.

Kallas, speak­ing on Tues­day at a press con­fer­ence in Brus­sels af­ter chair­ing a meet­ing of for­eign min­is­ters, said “a huge ma­jor­i­ty” of mem­ber na­tions are “very keen on send­ing this mes­sage that the suf­fer­ing of these peo­ple is un­ten­able.” She did not pro­vide clear de­tails on tim­ing and mech­a­nisms for the re­view.

‘Ut­ter­ly in­tol­er­a­ble’

Lam­my said the U.K. was im­pos­ing sanc­tions on a fur­ther “three in­di­vid­u­als, two il­le­gal set­tler out­posts and two or­ga­ni­za­tions sup­port­ing vi­o­lence against the Pales­tin­ian com­mu­ni­ty.”

He said the il­le­gal Is­raeli set­tle­ments were spread­ing across the West Bank “with the ex­plic­it sup­port of this Is­raeli gov­ern­ment.”

Is­rael’s For­eign Min­istry spokesper­son, Oren Mar­morstein, called the sanc­tions against West Bank set­tlers “un­jus­ti­fied and re­gret­table” and said the free trade agree­ment ne­go­ti­a­tions were not be­ing ad­vanced by the U.K. any­way.

While Lam­my’s words were wel­comed by some in the House of Com­mons, oth­ers called for stronger ac­tion, sug­gest­ing eco­nom­ic sanc­tions against Is­rael and rec­og­niz­ing the state of Pales­tine.

A hand­ful of mem­bers shout­ed for him to call Is­rael’s ac­tions “geno­cide,” though Lam­my la­beled it “ex­trem­ism” and “mon­strous.”

Still oth­ers crit­i­cized the joint state­ment, say­ing it favoured Hamas.

“Op­pos­ing the ex­pan­sion of a war that has killed thou­sands of chil­dren is not re­ward­ing Hamas,” Lam­my said.

The U.K. an­nounce­ment fol­lowed com­ments by British Prime Min­is­ter Keir Starmer, who called chil­dren’s suf­fer­ing in Gaza “ut­ter­ly in­tol­er­a­ble” and re­peat­ed his call for a cease­fire.

“I want to put on record to­day that we’re hor­ri­fied by the es­ca­la­tion from Is­rael,” Starmer said.

Starmer calls for cease­fire

On Mon­day, Starmer joined French Pres­i­dent Em­manuel Macron and Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Mark Car­ney in is­su­ing one of the most sig­nif­i­cant crit­i­cisms by close al­lies of Is­rael’s han­dling of the war in Gaza and its ac­tions in the West Bank.

The three lead­ers threat­ened to take “con­crete ac­tions” if the gov­ern­ment of Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu did not cease its re­newed mil­i­tary of­fen­sive and sig­nif­i­cant­ly lift re­stric­tions on hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid.

Ne­tanyahu called the state­ment “a huge prize” for Hamas.

Starmer said a cease­fire was the on­ly way to free the dozens of hostages Hamas still holds. He al­so called for in­creased ship­ments of hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid in­to Gaza, say­ing the ba­sic quan­ti­ty al­lowed by Is­rael is “ut­ter­ly in­ad­e­quate.”

“This war has gone on for far too long,” Starmer said. “We can­not al­low the peo­ple of Gaza to starve.”

While Is­rael al­lowed a first few trucks with ba­by food and des­per­ate­ly need­ed sup­plies to be­gin rolling in­to Gaza on Mon­day, U.N. hu­man­i­tar­i­an chief Tom Fletch­er de­scribed it as a “drop in the ocean of what is ur­gent­ly need­ed.” Is­rael said dozens more trucks en­tered Tues­day.

Ten­sions be­tween France and Is­rael

Is­rael ini­tial­ly re­ceived wide­spread in­ter­na­tion­al sup­port to root out Hamas mil­i­tants fol­low­ing the group’s sur­prise at­tack that killed some 1,200 peo­ple, most­ly civil­ians, on Oct. 7, 2023, and took 251 cap­tives.

But pa­tience with Is­rael is wear­ing thin af­ter more than 53,000 Pales­tin­ian deaths, most­ly women and chil­dren, ac­cord­ing to Gaza’s Health Min­istry, which doesn’t dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween civil­ians and com­bat­ants in its count. Is­rael’s lat­est on­slaught has killed more than 300 peo­ple in re­cent days, lo­cal health of­fi­cials said.

In re­cent weeks, Macron in­ten­si­fied diplo­mat­ic ef­forts to put pres­sure on Is­rael, urg­ing a cease­fire and call­ing for lift­ing the block­ade of hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid.

Last month, Macron said France should move to­ward rec­og­niz­ing a Pales­tin­ian state, pos­si­bly in June when France and Sau­di Ara­bia co-host an in­ter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence about im­ple­ment­ing a two-state so­lu­tion.

Macron, who has said that rec­og­niz­ing Pales­tine is not a ″taboo″ for France, last week sug­gest­ed that re­vis­it­ing the EU’s co­op­er­a­tion agree­ments with Is­rael is on the ta­ble.

Ten­sions be­tween France and Is­rael have es­ca­lat­ed af­ter Macron called for stop­ping arms de­liv­er­ies for use in Gaza in an Oc­to­ber ra­dio in­ter­view, prompt­ing Ne­tanyahu’s crit­i­cism. France al­so sought to im­pose a ban on Is­raeli de­fense com­pa­nies to pre­vent them from ex­hibit­ing weapons at the Eu­ron­aval trade ex­hi­bi­tion.

Set­tler vi­o­lence

The U.S., France, the EU, the U.K. and Cana­da pre­vi­ous­ly hit Is­raeli set­tlers and set­tler groups with sanc­tions for their in­volve­ment in vi­o­lence against Pales­tini­ans and in il­le­gal de­vel­op­ment in the West Bank.

The mea­sures ex­pose the sanc­tioned peo­ple and groups to as­set freezes and trav­el and visa bans. The As­so­ci­at­ed Press pre­vi­ous­ly re­port­ed that these mea­sures have had min­i­mal im­pact as a de­ter­rent.

Set­tler at­tacks caus­ing in­jury or death to Pales­tini­ans have surged since the Hamas at­tack in 2023. Is­rael says it op­pos­es set­tler vi­o­lence and blames it on an ex­trem­ist fringe.

Pales­tini­ans say the Is­raeli army does lit­tle to pro­tect them and that the at­tacks are part of a sys­tem­at­ic at­tempt to ex­pel them from their land. —LON­DON (AP)

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Sto­ry by BRI­AN MEL­LEY and SYLVIE COR­BET | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Na­tal­ie Melz­er in Nahriya, Is­rael, and Melanie Lid­man in Jerusalem con­tributed to this re­port.