British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband on Monday called the suffering imposed on Palestinians by Israel’s government “a stain on the conscience of the world” as he denounced “ethnic cleansing” in the West Bank, and “war crimes in Gaza.”

Received with standing applause at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, Miliband said that the government headed by Prime Minister Andy Burnham has reset its approach to Israel and the Palestinians.

“We call out ethnic cleansing by the settler terrorists in the West Bank,” he said, referring to violence by extremist settlers against Palestinians in the territory. “We call out the evidence of war crimes in Gaza. We call out Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine.”

His remarks came amid a deterioration in relations between Israel and the UK, after Miliband announced earlier this month that Britain would ban all dealings with West Bank settlements, along with sweeping sanctions and a range of other punitive measures. Canada, France and other nations announced similar measures.

At the conference, Miliband stressed that the UK would ban trade with Israeli settlements: “We will disrupt the supply lines of British finance, British construction and British services for illegal settlements.”

He said that London’s decision to sanction Israelis living over the Green Line “mobilized the international community, country after country.”

Miliband also recalled that his........

© The Times of Israel