Israeli Settlements: Trade Ban

Debate between Iqbal Mohamed and Naushabah Khan

Thursday 9th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Naushabah Khan (Gillingham and Rainham) (Lab)]

For over half a century, successive Governments of every political persuasion have affirmed to this House that Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are unlawful. This is not a matter of personal interpretation, but a consistent and well-established legal consensus—consensus that is shared by the Foreign Office, codified in resolutions of the United Nations Security Council and, since July 2024, articulated with exceptional clarity by the International Court of Justice. Yet the stain on our moral fabric is that despite recognition of that, those same settlement goods are sold in British shops, and just last month, settler properties were marketed at a fair in London.

When settlement expansion threatens to extinguish the very two-state solution that this Government are committed to, we must ask ourselves what purpose is served by delaying the upholding of moral and legal obligations that some of our European allies have already begun to uphold. Put simply, when Spain has banned all settlement trade, why cannot we?

Across the House, there is consensus among Members on our position that this expansion is illegal under international law, yet through our continued delay in banning trade with these settlements, we risk in practice, if not in principle, giving legitimacy to Israel’s claim to sovereignty over occupied territory. If we are not prepared to match our rhetoric with action, our condemnation of settlement expansion amounts to lip service.

In January, many of us took to these Benches to stress the importance of the rules-based order when the President of the United States threatened to take Greenland. We have time and again championed that same order in condemning Putin and rightly standing with Ukraine. We risk losing credibility for having made those correct calls the moment we permit commerce with what we, and everyone around us, deem an illegal enterprise.

[Iqbal Mohamed]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Naushabah Khan]

I will not, in the interests of time, thank you.

Nor is it only Israel’s sovereignty over occupied land that we risk legitimising; it is also the violent means by which these territories are being occupied. The United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs documented over 1,700 settler attacks on Palestinian communities across the west bank just last year. Not taking action now is to underwrite, however indirectly, the conditions in which violence is inflicted on Palestinian men, women and children by Israeli settlers, and the military force that stands behind it. I therefore urge the Minister not to delay any further, and to take action today.