– 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
The below Parliamentary question was asked by on 2016-07-11.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the most recent Quartet Report’s statement that Israel’s continuing policy of settlement and construction” was “steadily eroding the viability of the two-state solution”
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
On 5 July, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my Hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), issued a statement expressing deep concerns about the announcement of new Israeli settlement units in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. A Foreign and Commonwealth Office spokesperson statement, on 22 June, also expressed concern about Israel’s decision to provide an additional £12 million of funding for settlements. The position of the UK on Israeli settlements is clear: they are illegal under international law, an obstacle to peace and make a two-state solution, with Jerusalem as a shared capital, harder to achieve. We will continue to raise our objections to settlements with the Israeli government.
