Sir Vincent Fean, BPP Trustee, with Carole Walker, Times Radio, 25 Feb 2026
Carole Walker
The US Embassy will be providing passport services in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank by the end of this week. It comes as the Israeli government has approved new measures to make it easier for settlers to seize Palestinian land in the West Bank. Earlier I spoke to Sir Vincent Fean, former Consul General, Jerusalem, and I asked him how significant this move was.
Sir Vincent
I think it’s big and bad. The US is traditionally the broker between Palestinians and Israelis. I’m afraid that this is evidence that it’s not an honest broker and that Britain and Europe and the wider world need to look to themselves for a way forward between Israel and Palestine. Bearing in mind that Britain recognized the State of Palestine as recently as last September, with France and others.
Just to set the picture: there are 750,000 illegal settlers in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, scattered across the West Bank, and the US Embassy has said that on Friday it will offer passport and consular services to American citizens, probably dual nationals — Israeli-Americans — in a settlement. That’s the first point. It contradicts the statement five months ago by President Trump that he is against annexation by Israel of the West Bank, because what’s happening in practice, Carole, is that day by day Israel is annexing parts of the West Bank, expanding settlements, and encouraging, sadly, settler violence and displacement of Palestinians from their own land.
Carole
As you say, President Trump has said that he opposes Israel’s annexation of the West Bank, but by taking this step it would seem as though the United States is legitimising those illegal settlements.
Sir Vincent
I agree. It’s a big and bad step by the US Embassy, and one would assume — but you can never quite know with this American administration — that it’s being done with President Trump’s approval. You can never quite tell. The US Ambassador to Israel, Mr Huckabee, got into trouble just last week with the majority of the Arab world by saying that Israel can basically take what land it wants, including from neighbouring Arab countries.
Yesterday, our Minister for the Middle East, Hamish Falconer, made a very strong statement in the House of Commons. He’s condemned the sweeping extensions by Israel of its control over the West Bank in flagrant violation of international law, and has promised concrete steps in accordance with international law to counter settlement expansion and the things we’ve just been discussing. He hasn’t specified what those concrete steps would be.
I have two suggestions for him. One is to ban trade between the United Kingdom and the settlements — trade in goods, services, and investment — which would have some impact on the Israeli economy and is consistent with international law and the advice of the International Court of Justice.
And the second one is the one that we discussed last time, which is to attempt to prevent the biggest and worst settlement building, which is called E1, between East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, which would effectively divide the West Bank into two and is designed to prevent the two-state outcome that our government advocates.
So how to stop that now that tenders have been issued for that building and are going to be opened on the 16th of March? Well, between now and the 16th of March, I would like Hamish Falconer to announce a warning to any bidder — be it a bank, be it a construction company — any bidder for those tenders, that they would face risk in the United Kingdom and allied states. Risks to their business interests. That would affect Israeli banks, it would affect Israeli construction companies, and ought to give them pause. If we wait until after the 16th of March, it’ll be too late because once the tenders are opened, then Israel is under some commercial obligations and will not step back.
Carole
think that this further move towards legitimising those settlements in the West Bank could The focus has very much been on the Gaza Peace Plan. Just briefly, if you could, do you destabilise the next phase of the Gaza Peace Plan?
Sir Vincent
The next phase of the Gaza Peace Plan is in trouble with or without this bad action in the West Bank. I’m not at all clear that the International Stabilisation Force will come into being. There are some pledges, but the countries that have pledged troops to go into Gaza are doing so on the basis that it will be peacekeeping and not peacemaking, and it is not at all clear which it will be.
And the second thing to say is that there needs to be Palestinian agency — i.e. Palestinians running Palestine, Palestinians running Gaza. And at the moment, the Palestinian committee which is in existence to work on Gaza is at the bottom of a pile of other committees led by President Trump: the Board of Peace seems to be a distraction rather than focusing on Gaza itself.