Business and Trade
Israeli Settlements: Trade Ban
“I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) for securing the debate and speaking with so much passion about an issue that concerns us all. The ever-increasing number of Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are illegal—each and every one of them. Their purpose is clear: they are a means by which the Israeli Government can encourage land grabs, separate one Palestinian village from another, prevent the villagers accessing water and other utilities, and make it more difficult to map out a contiguous Palestinian state. They are also a way of intimidating Palestinians who find themselves surrounded by these fast growing and well-defended settlements. The level of violence instigated by the settlers has increased; more than 1,700 settler attacks causing causalities or property damage have been recorded across 270 Palestinian communities in the west bank in 2025 alone. On a recent visit to Israel and Palestine, our delegation saw the scale of the encroachment, the plans for further, larger settlements, and heard about examples of violence and intimidation for ourselves. We visited the village of Umm al-Khair, where Awdah Hathaleen was shot and killed last summer. Eyewitnesses and bodycam footage suggests that the perpetrator, who has never been charged, was a settler already sanctioned by the UK Government. While we sat in the open, speaking with villagers and playing football with the children, an IDF vehicle stopped outside our meeting and two, fully armed soldiers got out, had a casual look as they passed and slowly walked on, before returning the way they came. That was a minor incident, but let us imagine that it was our life, and we knew that the people living at the end of the street wanted our house and our land, and would do whatever it took to get it, with the full backing of their Government.”
