New report highlights complicity with Israel’s expansion of illegal West Bank settlements

SEPTEMBER 18, 2025

A new report launched this week by 80 human rights, humanitarian and faith-based organisations highlights the depth of corporate complicity in Israel’s illegal settlements, which now cover 42% of the West Bank, all on stolen Palestinian land.

Trading With Illegal Settlements: How Foreign States and Corporations Enable Israel’s Illegal Settlement Enterprise highlights how Israel’s illegal settlement project has fragmented the West Bank and destroyed the Palestinian economy, resulting in widespread poverty and suffering. Families routinely face extremist settler violence, forcible transfer and dispossession, harsh restrictions on their freedom of movement, and a total denial of their right to self-determination and sovereignty.

Despite the devastating humanitarian impact and illegality of Israeli settlements under international law, foreign states continue to support them. The European Union and its member states represent Israel’s largest trading bloc and the policies of these states continue to financially support and normalize the settlement economy.

Foreign states, in clear violation of international law, sustain Israeli settlements by importing settlement-produced goods and allowing corporations under their jurisdiction to operate in, and trade with, illegal settlements. In doing so, they are directly contributing to the denial of Palestinians’ right to self-determination, systematic discrimination and human rights violations, forcible transfer and dispossession, and economic subjugation.

The report highlights how foreign states and corporations, through ongoing trade with illegal settlements, directly enable the humanitarian crisis driven by Israel’s prolonged occupation. Focusing on the EU and the UK, it addresses the urgent need for a ban on settlement trade as a mechanism to uphold international law, protect Palestinian livelihoods, and halt and reverse Israel’s settlement expansion and end its unlawful occupation.

By examining the economic, humanitarian, and legal dimensions of settlements, the report argues that foreign trade of products and services with settlements sustains the occupation, contributes to the humanitarian crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and violates international law.

Signatories to the report include Oxfam, Christian Aid and War on Want. It begins with an overview of the devastating economic and humanitarian consequences for Palestinian communities caused by Israeli settlements and their associated infrastructure. This ranges from the loss of agricultural land to the  the control of the water supply and pollution, which together are estimated to have cost the Palestinian economy $50 billion between 2000 and 2020.

Through a range of incentives, subsidies, and tax benefits, Israel actively encourages companies to operate and invest in the Occupied Territories.  “These financial incentives make it far more profitable for companies to do business in settlements than inside Israel’s recognised borders. This subsidisation is accelerating settlement expansion, further entrenching Palestinian land confiscation, and deepening economic dependency on settlement industries.”

The report concludes wit h a set of recommendations that address the complicity of the EU and UK in Israel’s illegal settlements policy. They include adopting and implementing legislation that explicitly bans trade with settlements; taking steps to identify and prevent forms of support hat assist the maintaining of Israel’s unlawful occupation of Palestinian territory; shifting the burden of proof for determining the origins of Israeli goods from their own customs agencies to Israeli exporters; and barring financial institutions and other corporations headquartered within their jurisdictions from investing in settlement-based companies.

Read the full report here.