‘A stain on our city’: UK urged to ban Israeli property fair selling stolen Palestinian land
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UK ministers are under mounting pressure to ban a London real estate event accused of marketing land in illegal Israeli settlements, after several MPs challenged the government in Parliament and Green Party leader Zack Polanski warned that allowing it to proceed would be a “stain” on the capital.
The Great Israeli Real Estate Event 2026 is scheduled to take place in London on Sunday 14 June. Its website says attendees will be able to meet consultants on Aliyah, higher education, finances, taxation, mortgages, transferring funds and home management, and invites them to “explore the best Anglo neighbourhoods to find your dream home”. It lists areas including Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Ramat Beit Shemesh, Netanya, Raanana, Modiin, Herzliya, Haifa, Ashdod, Beersheva and Ashkelon, while offering “special deals exclusive to event participants”.
The event promotes property in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, including Gush Etzion, alongside homes inside Israel. During a debate in Parliament on Tuesday, Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Calum Miller described the event as “Palestinian land being advertised, bartered and sold on the streets of our capital.”
Addressing the Commons, Richard Burgon, the Labour MP for Leeds East, urged Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper to stop the event, drawing a direct comparison with Russia’s occupation of Ukraine.
“Let us just imagine that, this weekend in our capital city, there was a ‘great Russian real estate event’ selling off Ukrainian land. Quite rightly and without hesitation, the Government would move to ban such an illegal event. This weekend in London, there is the Great Israeli Real Estate Event, openly advertising the illegal sale of land in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories. Given that the Government rightly recognised the state of Palestine, surely we should now move to ban this event, which is selling off land illegally in Palestine.”
READ: 140 Labour MPs urge UK to ban trade with illegal Israeli settlements
Cooper did not commit to banning the event, but said the government was looking into it. “We are pursuing that particular event. If we find any cases where there are breaches of UK law, we will also pursue them,” she told MPs. “The wider issue is that nobody in the UK should be advertising illegal settlements. Nobody should be pursuing illegal settlements. No businesses or organisations should be getting involved in them.”
Polanski, leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, also wrote to Cooper and Mayor of London Sadiq Khan demanding urgent intervention, describing the planned event as “deeply disturbing”.
“This is obscene,” Polanski wrote on X. “I’ve called on @MayorofLondon and @YvetteCooperMP to stop the event and for this govt to take real action on illegal settlements.”
In his letter, Polanski said the event is due to come to London “to auction stolen Palestinian land to the highest bidder” and “proudly promotes the sale of land in settlements like ‘Gush Etzion’ in the occupied West Bank, marked as illegal under international law”.
Polanski warned that “many Londoners are rightfully concerned that an event promoting land confiscation and the destruction of homes is set to take place in our city.”
Addressing Khan, Polanski said: “Sadiq, you have previously stood with campaigners and Londoners of conscience in condemning the DSEI arms fair, and I welcomed your leadership on that issue. I ask that you now take the same principled stance against this proposed land sale, which would be a stain on our city if allowed to proceed.”
READ: 6 nations impose sanctions on networks financing, enabling occupiers’ attacks in West Bank
Polanski also called on Cooper to move beyond statements of concern. “Your government has a moral and legal responsibility to take action against illegal settlements,” he wrote. “This must include banning the import of settlement goods and imposing further sanctions on all Israeli Government officials responsible for authorising illegal settlements. Empty condemnation is not enough — we need to see action.”
The Green Party leader also highlighted Bank Leumi’s sponsorship of the event, saying the Israeli bank had been identified by Human Rights Watch for directly supporting settlement expansion through mortgage loans and work with construction companies building on stolen Palestinian land, including in Gush Etzion.
Cooper used the wider debate to announce new sanctions against organisations accused of supporting illegal settlements and settler violence, and said the government had strengthened business guidance to make clear that British citizens and businesses should not conduct economic or financial activity in illegal settlements.
“The expansion of the illegal settlements is not only deeply wrong, because Palestinians are being forced from their own land, sometimes in the most brutal of circumstances, but deliberately designed to try to make it impossible to ever get to a two-state solution,” Cooper told MPs. “That is the purpose for some of those involved, and we should be very clear on that and call it out for what it is.”
However, Cooper stopped short of backing a formal trade ban. She said the government wanted to target illegal settlements and activity linked to them, while avoiding an impact on what she described as “long-standing, legitimate trade” with Israel.
READ: Israel allocates $51M to build 69 illegal settlements in occupied West Bank, watchdog says
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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