Israel Orders UK Consulate Shut Over Sanctions

Miliband said he regretted Israel's decision but was not surprised by it. "We weighed the costs and benefits of acting (...) and we thought we simply could not stand by because we feared Israeli action," he told BBC TV Wednesday.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar called Britain's action "morally distorted" and accused the UK of "blatant interference in the affairs of a sovereign state and its electoral process" ahead of next month's Israeli election. Saar said on X that he thanked Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch for criticizing the sanctions; Badenoch wrote in the Sun that the Labour government was "putting its own party-political interests ahead of our national interest."

Huckabee told the BBC: "This is an irrational action … if the UK is really interested in dealing with issues they feel like are wrong, where are the sanctions against North Korea, China, Russia?" A White House official told Axios that Huckabee's statements "were not coordinated with the White House" or the State Department.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio declined to condemn the sanctions. "The President hasn't commented on this and neither have I. We were made aware that they are gonna make this decision. We heard their arguments as to why," Rubio told reporters Tuesday. "We share the goal of stability. We don't want to see an uptick in violence or tensions in the West Bank in a tenuous time in the region."

Rep. Fine was blunter: "Any company – or nation – that boycotts Israel is boycotted by Florida," he wrote, calling the sanctions a "vanity project in support of Muslim terror" that "could cost them billions of dollars."

Britain's chief rabbi called the sanctions a "truly dark day." The British Jewish group Yachad said the announcement was "not anti-Israel, and it is certainly not antisemitic," accusing Israel's "extremist government" of crossing almost every "red line" to entrench its occupation.