Andy Burnham is facing demands to ban a company with links to illegal Israeli settlements from a license to drill North Sea oil as part of sanctions announced last week.
It comes after former First Minister Humza Yousaf warned trade restrictions in response to West Bank settler violence announced by the Prime Minister must cover Delek Group - a firm whose subsidiary Ithaca Energy is vying to exploit the controversial Rosebank oil fields off Shetland.
Rosebank licence under scrutiny
Equinor, the Norwegian state energy company, was granted permission to drill Rosebank along with partner Ithaca in 2023 but following a challenge at the Court of Session in Edinburgh the licence was deemed unlawful.
However an application has been resubmitted and the development is expected to be given the green light by the UK Government within weeks.
Delek Group is accused of providing services and utilities to illegal Israeli settlements.
Yousaf calls for blacklisting
Yousaf said: “This week I welcomed that the Foreign Secretary confirmed that official UK Government policy was to ban any trade with illegal settlements. This includes those who service and finance them.
“There could be no clearer case of a company servicing illegal settlements than the Delek Group, who have been accused by the UN of supplying the ‘provision of services and utilities supporting the maintenance and existence of settlements’.
“If the Foreign Secretary’s words are to mean anything, then the Delek Group, and their subsidiaries, should be blacklisted from operating in the UK.”
Yousaf had family trapped in Gaza during Israel’s brutal assault on the enclave and is a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause. He has also spoken out on green issues and opposes any new drilling licences in the North Sea.
He added: “Illegal settlements and those who service them like the Delek Group cannot be allowed to profit from Scotland’s natural resources, and this is just another reason Rosebank should not be given the green light.”
Delek's operations and sanctions
Ithaca Energy is 75 per cent or more owned by Delek, an Israeli conglomerate which largely operates in the fossil fuel industry and owns one of the country’s largest chains of petrol stations.
Delek operates fuel and service stations in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, part of Palestine, as well as the Golan Heights which has been annexed from Syria and “provides services and utilities to support the maintenance of Israeli settlements”.
All three territories are considered occupied under international law, with Israeli settlements in those territories also considered illegal.
Approval of a drilling licence for Rosebank could see the firm benefiting from a £200million windfall according to some estimates.
The UK announced sanctions on illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank last week accusing Israel’s government of turning a blind eye to the “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians by settlers.
Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said the move marked the “beginning of a new approach” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which “not only calls out injustice and suffering but acts”.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar responded by accusing him of spreading an “outrageous lie” and announced counter-measures including shutting the UK’s consulate in East Jerusalem.
The UK sanctions will ban settlement goods but also act against companies and individuals providing services for settlement expansion.
The sanctions were launched alongside France and Canada, which in a joint statement with the UK said the action “marks a further turning point in our approach to protecting the two-state solution”.
