Britain’s settlement sanctions were never going to stay in London. Days after Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced an import ban on goods from Israeli communities in the West Bank and penalties for those who help them expand, 11 other governments said they would follow. Norway is now moving a bill that would make buying or selling those goods a crime punishable by up to three years in prison. Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide says the case is stronger precisely because so many others are piling on. 

That is why Israel’s first reply was a mistake. Closing the British Consulate in East Jerusalem and barring a few officials is the sort of gesture Miliband already priced in. He told the BBC Britain had weighed Israeli retaliation “and we thought we simply could not stand by.” A priced-in slap does not deter the next capital drafting a prison term.