Settler products from occupied Palestine sold to Europe as Israeli, investigation finds

Shipments deliberately mislabelled to bolster settler economy, says non-profit Global Echo

Israeli exporters to Europe regularly hide the origin of produce grown in occupied Palestine to qualify for unlawful tax breaks that bolster the settler economy, a rights group investigation has found.

The legal non-profit Global Echo analysed more than 30,000 export documents for thousands of Israeli shipments to the UK and EU over eight years.

One in six shipments it investigated contained agricultural products that had originated in illegal settlements in occupied Palestine and the Syrian Golan Heights, which had been mislabelled as Israeli-grown.

“This isn’t an aberration and its not accidental,” said Emily Schaeffer Omer-Man, the executive director of Global Echo. “This is a system that the UK and the EU have perpetuated and agreed to.”

The group is demanding the UK government review controls on Israeli imports, and has promised to take legal action if HMRC does not tackle verification concerns.

Europe is Israel’s biggest market, and the EU its single top trading partner, accounting for almost 30% of exports.

A free trade agreement signed in 1995 reduced tariffs for Israeli imports, but products from settlements do not qualify, because Israel’s military occupation of Palestine and Syrian territory is illegal under international law.