Just weeks before Israelis voted on October 27, Britain and some of its allies introduced new sanctions and bans aimed at Israeli settlements. With the election now over, the results raise a question about how much outside pressure can accomplish.
British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced the measures on September 8 and told Parliament he did not want to interfere in the vote. "The election is for the Israeli people to make their own decisions about their future," he said, adding that Britain's quarrel was with the policies of the Netanyahu government, not the Israeli people. Several MPs, including shadow foreign secretary Tom Tugendhat, had worried that the sanctions and their timing would help Israel's far Right. Miliband acknowledged the concern but said the international community could not wait for an Israeli opposition government to change course.
The package included an import ban on settlement goods and restrictions on individuals and companies involved in settlement growth. London maintains that the steps target settlement activity, not Israel within its internationally recognized borders. They followed June 2025 sanctions on National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, imposed alongside Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway over alleged incitement of violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
Exit polls showed Netanyahu's bloc falling short of the 61 seats needed for a majority, though it still drew more votes overall than the change bloc. Likud finished far ahead of Eisenkot's Yashar, which pre-election polls had suggested could do much better. Neither result, however, shows that international pressure affected how Israelis voted.
A report in The Spectator, later picked up by Globes, alleged that British diplomats and intelligence officials warned the government that announcing sanctions before the election risked affecting Israeli politics. It also said Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar asked Miliband to wait until after the vote, and that some British officials agreed. The fear was that Netanyahu could cast himself as a defender of Israel against foreign pressure. On September 8, Sa'ar accused the UK of "blatant interference in the affairs of a sovereign state and in its electoral process."
Those allegations deserve attention, but they do not prove the sanctions were meant to unseat Netanyahu. Knowingly accepting a political risk is different from deliberately pursuing a particular electoral result.
The effects in Israel could have run in two directions at once. Netanyahu and his supporters could use the measures to argue that foreign governments are hostile regardless of Israel's security needs. His opponents could argue that his policies have damaged Israel's international standing and that a different government would have to repair it.
Voters were also weighing other issues after years of war, including the consequences of October 7, confidence in the government's handling of national security, military-service exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men, and the cost of living. High turnout and the weak showing of Netanyahu's bloc in exit polls cannot reveal which of these mattered most, or whether sanctions moved support between camps.
Britain says the measures are meant to restrict the economic activity that supports settlement expansion and to preserve the possibility of a two-state solution. Their success will depend on whether they are implemented, whether they affect settlement activity and whether they change the calculations of those involved. For now, international pressure became part of the election debate, but the figures do not establish that it changed the result.
