US President Donald Trump did not push back on British plans to sanction Israeli settlements when he was briefed on the proposal by British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, a Western official told The Times of Israel on Wednesday.

The UK’s Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband on Tuesday announced that Britain, France and Canada would end all dealings with settlements, denounced the “unlawful occupation” of the West Bank, and accused “settler terrorists” of “ethnic cleansing,” indulged or supported by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Burnham held a phone call with Trump this week during which he informed the US president of London’s plan to ban the import of goods from the settlements, along with a host of other measures aimed at countering expansionist Israeli policy in the West Bank, the Western official said, confirming reporting by the Axios news site.

“There was no request to hold off,” the Western official briefed on the call said.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio hinted at the lack of opposition from Washington when asked about the British sanctions on Tuesday.

While Rubio noted that the US would not join the UK in the move — which was also backed by 11 other Western countries — he avoided criticizing it.

“We were made aware that they are gonna make this decision. We heard their arguments as to why. 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,” the top US diplomat said.

US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee — a longtime backer of the settlement movement — offered very different comments earlier in the day, which indicated that Washington was going to punish London over the sanctions package.

“If the Brits go and put some kind of boycott and sanctions on them, the repercussions are going to be significant,” Huckabee told the BBC.

But a White House official later told Axios that Huckabee’s comments were not coordinated with the White House or the State Department, suggesting that they did not represent the administration’s policy on the matter.

The Western official who spoke to The Times of Israel noted that a more forceful US response may still come in the days ahead, even if it........

© The Times of Israel