Britain’s relations with Israel are strained, this time because of Israeli settlement growth. A British government spokesman admitted last week that the UK is taking steps to put the kibosh on Israeli settlements by financing certain projects.

In a television interview in Dubai with Al-Arabiya, British spokesman Martin Day said the government was “taking practical steps toward freezing settlement activities.”

“For instance we finance projects aimed at halting settlement activities,” said Day. “One of these projects seeks to build new Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and save Palestinian houses from demolition.”

The British government is also removing preferential customs duties for Israeli products that come out of Israeli settlements.

“In light of this, we can say that we are taking effective and practical steps against settlement activities,” said Day.

Israeli officials didn’t find Day’s comments kosher. It is no wonder, as Britain is not only actively supporting Palestinian settlement growth but also actively trying to stop Israel’s own growth.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry’s senior deputy director general, Rafi Barak, sought clarification from British Ambassador Tom Phillips, asking for an explanation on Tuesday. After a second meeting on Wednesday, where Barak voiced Israel’s concern over the matter again, Phillips said he was looking into the matter.

The ministry’s spokesman for the Hebrew press called Day’s spiel the “height of chutzpah” and said such activity “was unheard of.”

The British Embassy’s spokesman in Tel Aviv denied the UK was “involved in the actual construction of new Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem,” but the denial is hard to take at face value after Day’s comments.

Israel is facing increasing international pressure to stop its settlement growth—sadly from former stalwart allies. Earlier this year, the U.S. joined the criticism when President Barack Obama in a speech in Cairo demanded that Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria stop.

Day’s comments are another crack in Israeli-British relations. This comes after the UK also recently activated a partial arms embargo against Israel, claiming Israel violated security agreements in Operation Cast Lead. The Israeli campaign against the terrorist group Hamas in Gaza was aimed at ending terrorist rocket attacks on Israeli cities.

This latest rift comes over a particularly contentious area, East Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the epicenter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which, thanks largely to illegal construction of thousands of Palestinian structures in the area, is bound to erupt soon. The UK’s encouragement of Palestinian settlement in East Jerusalem can only add more tension to this prophetic fault line.

The Trumpet has forecasted a complete falling out between Israel and its allies—particularly the UK and the U.S.—and a Palestinian takeover of East Jerusalem. These predictions are all based on Bible prophecy. To learn more about these prophecies, read the booklet Jerusalem in Prophecy. It will explain how the actions of the British government are tremors of a soon-coming seismic shift in the Middle East, the aftershocks of which will have tremendous impact for the entire world.