Government under pressure to ensure the trade deal is legal

June 2023

Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch will be under pressure at Business Questions on Thursday 29 June to ensure that the free trade agreement her Department is negotiating with Israel complies with international law. Three MPs have tabled questions asking her how she will square the deal with United Nations Security Council 2334 – supported and largely drafted by the UK – which creates an obligation on all countries not to treat settlements as part of Israel. Under the current trade deal, signed by the EU in 1995 and rolled over in a transitional deal in 2019, Israeli exports benefit from zero- or low-tariff trade but settlement goods do not.

However, Israel refuses to identify which exports are from settlements, leaving the customs authorities in the importing country to work out which goods qualify for tariff reductions from a list of postcodes. This gives UK Customs a choice between tracking down the origin of each box of herbs from its postcode, which is a hugely time-consuming exercise, or checking only when there is hard evidence of fraud, which inevitably means that most settlement goods will reach the shops unchecked.

Alan Brown, Scottish National Party, Kilmarnock and Loudoun asked:
At a time when illegal Israeli settlers are attacking Palestinian villages, burning houses and cars, with the complicity of Israeli soldiers, who stand and watch, and the encouragement of Israeli ministers, the very least the UK could do is to stop the settlers  enjoying tariff-free exports at the expense of the UK taxpayer.

One of the benefits of Brexit is that the UK is no longer bound by the EU-Israel Association Agreement of 1995, which makes no explicit distinction between Israel and settlements, so the UK can negotiate its own trade agreement with Israel with a territorial clause to make it clear that it only applies to pre-1967 “green-line” Israel.

In any case the UK is legally obliged to do this – or something similar – under the 2016 UN Security Council Resolution 2334 which states that countries must “distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967”.

From Palestine Briefing

The Salisbury group recently hosted a talk on the apartheid system the Israeli government operates in the occupied territories.