UK ‘should impose sanctions’ on Zionist groups financing terrorism against Palestinians

The UK government has been called upon to impose sanctions on Zionist and settler groups which, says the Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK (AOHR UK), finance terrorism against Palestinian in the occupied territories.

The AOHR UK has submitted a request to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office in London to impose sanctions on the World Zionist Organisation (WZO) and the Israeli Amana settlers’ movement because of their active role in supporting settlers engaged in terrorist acts against Palestinians.

The rights group sent a detailed report to the Foreign Office containing evidence of the WZO and Amana role in signing contracts with settlers who are already sanctioned by the UK. The contracts include lands allocated for building settlement outposts for the settlers to expand, steal more land and attack Palestinians in the neighbourhood.

The Israeli occupation regime, said the AOHR UK, uses the WZO’s Settlement Department to transfer funds to settlers to build settlement outposts. The regime transferred more than £5.6 million to the WZO in 2023 to build 101 settlement outposts. The WZO transferred the funds to local councils that finance individuals and organisations to establish settlement outposts, which are illegal under international and even Israeli law.

Moreover, said the rights group, the World Zionist Organisation has signed contracts directly with settlers on the sanctions list in Britain, Canada and the United States, including Zvi Bar Yosef, who signed a contract to establish a farm, and the extremist Moshe Sharvit, who seized Palestinian land and established settlement outposts on it.

Amana is included on Canada’s sanctions list as one of the most active settlement organisations; it is described as the “mother and father” of illegal settlement outposts. The group’s assets are valued at more than £120m, and it has an annual budget estimated at tens of millions of pounds. The settler’s organisation also signed a contract with Yinon Levy, who is on the British sanctions list due to his role in managing the Mitarim Farm, established in 2021, and whose settlers used violence and destroyed property to displace Palestinian communities in October last year.

The AOHR UK expressed its surprise that the UK government imposes sanctions on individuals while leaving the organisations that provide them with financial and material support free of sanctions. “These settlers would not have been able to carry out their brutal attacks against the Palestinians without the support of these organisations,” said the rights group. “Moreover, these two organisations in particular are known to be active in establishing and developing settlements.”

All of Israel’s settlements and settlement outposts in the occupied Palestinian territories are illegal under international law. The International Court of Justice reiterated in July that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory is “unlawful”.

According to the rights group, Israel’s allies, including the UK, have turned a blind eye to the crimes of the occupation government in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — as well as occupied Jerusalem — and continued to provide the Tel Aviv regime with diplomatic, political, economic and military support. “They have not dared to impose sanctions on government officials, most notably Benjamin Netanyahu, who are responsible for the crimes committed in the occupied Palestinian territories.”

The sanctions imposed by the UK on individual settlers do not absolve the British government of its legal responsibilities. The move is regarded as a deceptive act intended to convey the impression that the UK is concerned about human rights abuses while giving unlimited support to the occupation regime. This, claimed the AOHR UK, makes it complicit in Israel’s crimes, including its genocide, apartheid, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

“At the very least, after a whole year of ‘plausible genocide’ in the Gaza Strip and decades of settlement growth in the occupied Palestinian territories, the British government has a moral and legal duty to impose comprehensive sanctions on the occupation regime and stop the export of all weapons used by Israel to kill and maim Palestinian civilians, mainly women and children.”

It is worth noting that there are dozens of settler organisations operating in the occupied Palestinian territories with branches around the world that collect donations to support the criminal activities of the settlers. The AOHR UK called on all countries in which such branches are based, collect donations and benefit from tax exemptions, to close them down and prosecute their officials for their direct involvement in crimes described in international humanitarian law as war crimes.

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