Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar issued a blistering takedown of his British counterpart, Ed Miliband, after Miliband released a statement condemning Israel’s launch of tenders for the E1 settlement project.

Miliband objected to Israel’s invitation to builders to offer contracts to build more than a thousand settlements in E1, a section of Area C in Judea, which falls under Israel’s total jurisdiction. The International Court of Justice has ruled that such settlements violate the Geneva Convention, which states that an occupying power may not transfer its citizens into occupied territory. Israel rejects the ruling, arguing that the territory is disputed, not occupied, because no sovereign nation exists from which the region has been occupied.

The international community has also raised the concern that bisecting the area with Israeli settlements will make a two-state solution impossible because there will not be a contiguous territory for a Palestinian state.

In his statement, Miliband threatened to take action against Israel.

“Britain will not stand back and accept the destruction of the two-state solution,” he wrote. “In the coming weeks we will set out a comprehensive set of measures to respond to Israeli government policies, protect the viability of the Palestinian state, target sanctions at those who participate in illegal settlement expansion, and support a just and lasting peace for Israelis and Palestinians.”

Gideon Sa’ar was having none of it.

He reminded Miliband that just as the United Kingdom has the right to build housing units for its citizens anywhere in its territory, Israel claims that same right for itself. He noted that the international community recognized the borders of Israel long ago and that the new construction falls inside those borders. He also pointed out the pure hypocrisy of a government that holds territories thousands of miles from its shores lecturing a tiny country with no territory outside its borders.

Sa’ar slammed Miliband for his one-sided criticism and threats against Israel while giving a free pass to the Palestinian Authority, which has never relinquished its “pay for slay” program that pays terrorists or the families of terrorists stipends for killing Israelis, with higher stipends awarded based on the number of Israelis killed.

“The Jewish people have the right to live throughout the Land of Israel, just as the British have the right to live in London and throughout the United Kingdom. More than a century ago, the Balfour Declaration formally recognized the historic right of the Jewish people to re-establish their national home in the Land of Israel — including in the area in question,” Sa’ar posted on X.

“Britain itself still controls colonial territories thousands of miles from its shores. It is absurd for Britain to lecture the Jewish people about where they may live in their historic tiny homeland, when the Jewish people’s connection and right to this land is the most extensively documented of any people in human history,” he added.

“The British Foreign Secretary’s statement is entirely one-sided. It condemns Israel while turning a blind eye to Palestinian terrorism, incitement, and the Palestinian Authority’s continued financial support for terror — the ‘pay for slay’ policy,” he also said.