LONDON: The Council for Arab-British Understanding has written to UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband asking if the government’s new sanctions on illegal Israeli settlements will apply to the occupied Syrian Golan Heights. Caabu’s director, Chris Doyle, highlighted that the 34 Israeli settlements in the Golan — with a population of about 30,000 — were just as illegal as those in the occupied West Bank. In a press release, the council described the settlements as a “flagrant breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949” that have “had a huge impact on the Syrian residents of the Golan Heights.” Doyle said: “I did raise this orally in a meeting with Foreign Office Minister Stephen Doughty on Sept. 7. If the British government is to be consistent, which I am sure it wishes to be, then the ban must include all the territories Israel occupied in 1967, including the Golan Heights. “We know wines from the occupied Golan Heights are sold and marketed in the UK. This needs to end.” Caabu welcomed the new sanctions as a “significant step-change in the UK approach” from a “strong declaratory position” to “taking tangible measures.” Doyle’s letter highlighted that all British governments have considered the Golan as occupied territory. In December 2024, Israel announced plans to increase the number of settlers there to 100,000 by 2030. The mainly Druze Syrian population in the area are “confined to four villages, and suffer from less access to water resources,” the letter said. “Any viable peace deal with Syria requires Israel to withdraw from occupied territory. Expanding the settlements there only makes achieving this harder. “We believe that the arguments made for a ban on trade with Israeli settlements in the State of Palestine mean that the ban should also include the Golan Heights. We hope that you can clarify the official position.”