Israeli Foreign Minister Saar Says Farage Pledged to Reverse UK Sanctions on Settlements

Israel's foreign minister said Wednesday he thanked Nigel Farage for opposing new British restrictions on trade with Israeli settlements, and that the Reform UK leader pledged to reverse the policy if his party takes power.

Gideon Saar wrote on X that he spoke with Farage after the Reform leader addressed a "Reform Friends of Israel" event at his party's conference in Birmingham last week.

"He told me he was pleased to have addressed the Reform Friends of Israel event at the party conference in Birmingham last week."

The exchange came a day after Britain's Labour government announced a ban on imports from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, settlements the UK government itself has said are illegal under international law. In announcing the measure, London accused settlers of carrying out "ethnic cleansing" through escalating attacks on Palestinians. France and Canada have separately imposed their own trade curbs on settlement goods.

According to Saar, Farage "assured me unequivocally that, in government, Reform UK would reverse the damage done to the UK-Israel relationship by the Labour Government and its policies." Farage did not dispute this in his own public response, saying a Reform government "would undo the damage caused by Labour."

Farage said he used the conversation to raise a separate matter: British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, which Argentina's President Javier Milei has pressed with new urgency. "I emphasised the Falklands issue to him and its importance to the British people, though I understand Israel's relationship with President Milei," Farage said.

The Falklands question has become tangled with the sanctions dispute inside Israel's own government. Unnamed right-wing Israeli leaders and commentators, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, have reportedly urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to recognize Argentine sovereignty over the islands as retaliation for the British measures. Milei is a close ally of Netanyahu; Argentina and Britain fought a war over the Falklands in 1982.

Saar's outreach was not limited to Farage. He said he also held calls this week with Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, shadow foreign secretary Tom Tugendhat, and Melissa Lantsman, deputy leader of Canada's Conservative Party, about the sanctions on settlements.

The episode places a sitting Israeli cabinet minister in direct, public coordination with opposition politicians in two Western democracies over policies their own governments have adopted toward the occupation, an arrangement Occupation Watch is continuing to track as part of its record of the international political machinery around settlement policy.