Israeli Voters Shrug Off Western Sanctions on Settlements — SkimNews
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- UK, France, and Canada imposed sanctions on Israel's illegal West Bank settlements, with UK Foreign Minister Ed Miliband accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing and referencing his own Jewish heritage.
- Israeli politicians across the spectrum rejected the measures: Gideon Saar called them "outrageous lies," Isaac Herzog branded them "gross interference in democratic elections," and opposition leader Yair Lapid called boycotts a "grave mistake."
- An August poll showed more than half of Jewish Israelis support retaining illegal settlements in any future Palestinian state deal, while nearly 40% backed annexing the territory in defiance of international law.
- Analysts Ori Goldberg, Michael Koplow, and Yehouda Shenhav-Shahrabani said sanctions will have little impact because voter blocs are hardened, security dominates voter concerns, and foreign pressure gets absorbed into an existing anti-Semitism narrative rather than changing the debate.
- Pollster Dahlia Scheindlin said there's "no real backlash" from sanctions — Netanyahu's critics dislike him more, and his supporters say "the world hates us no matter what."
- Netanyahu enters elections at serious risk of losing, but the article notes he has not publicly commented on the sanctions, and rival Gadi Eisenkot's Yashar Party manifesto does not mention the West Bank or Gaza at all.
- As of August, 76 Palestinians had been killed in the West Bank this year, per the article, and the territory is increasingly referred to by its biblical name "Judea and Samaria" in Israeli public discourse — a linguistic shift Shenhav-Shahrabani called institutionalised.
Why it matters: The sanctions underscore Israel's growing diplomatic isolation, but the deeper problem for Western policymakers is the absence of any domestic political actor willing to challenge settlement expansion — Netanyahu's chief rival calls the sanctions a "grave mistake" — meaning outside pressure has no internal lever to pull before voters go to the polls.
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