The direct effects of official sanctions against Israeli settlements are limited. But the momentum created by such moves inspires and pushes private actors to take their own steps in the same direction.

France on Tuesday published a warning to its citizens against doing business in or with Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Golan Heights and East Jerusalem. The UK issued a similar official warning to its citizens late last year, and according to Haaretz’s Barak Ravid, Italy and Spain are expected to make similar announcements soon.

There has been an open movement in the halls of European power in the past year or so to implement what EU officials insist has always been the union’s position: to ensure that the EU is settlement free.

There will be no more business as usual if peace talks fail, a senior bureaucrat in the EU’s External Action Service told me earlier this month. “There’s a new political perception and political will in the international community.”