At least 17 companies and entities with links to Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank hold United Kingdom public-sector contracts worth more than £2.1 billion, according to an investigation published by Al Jazeera this week. The figure comes from procurement data compiled by the analysts Tussell: 125 contracts with a combined award value of £2.129 billion.

Where the money actually goes

The headline number needs immediate qualification, and the investigation itself supplies it. Britain is not sending £2.1 billion to settlements. It is buying ordinary public services from large multinational groups, some of whose separate operations have been identified by the United Nations in connection with settlement activity.

The bulk of the total sits with one company. Firms ultimately controlled by Motorola Solutions, the American technology group, hold around £1.73 billion of it — overwhelmingly through the British subsidiary Airwave Solutions, which runs the secure communications network used by police, fire and ambulance services in England, Scotland and Wales. The Home Office awarded Airwave a contract extension worth roughly £1.562 billion.

The remaining contracts sit with firms inside four other corporate groups: the German building-materials company Heidelberg Materials, the French engineering group Egis, the Spanish train manufacturer CAF and the Chinese conglomerate Fosun. Fosun’s link runs through a subsidiary connected to the Israeli cosmetics firm Ahava, which has operated in the Mitzpe Shalem settlement; a Fosun-linked company, Breas Medical, holds UK contracts worth about £1.29 million. The contracts across the whole group cover road maintenance, transport, emergency services and driving licensing.

The legal argument

The July 2024 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice held that Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory is unlawful, and said other states should not render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation. That obligation is the hinge of the argument now being made in Britain.

Stephen Humphreys, professor of international law at the London School of Economics, told Al Jazeera that the UK may be failing its obligations by not investigating these companies’ activities itself and preventing them where necessary. On that reading, the duty is procedural before it is financial: a state that has been told by the world’s principal court that a situation is unlawful is expected to look at its own contracting, not wait to be shown a receipt.

The contrary position, which government lawyers in comparable cases have advanced, is that “aid or assistance” is not a limitless category. Buying a radio network from a subsidiary of a group whose separate Israeli business has been listed by the UN Human Rights Office is several corporate steps removed from assisting an occupation, and treating corporate ownership chains as legal proximity would make public procurement close to unworkable. That argument has force. It also does not answer the narrower question Humphreys raises, which is whether the UK has looked at all.

The politics arriving at the same time

The findings landed while more than 140 Labour MPs were pressing the government to ban trade with the settlements, a step Prime Minister Andy Burnham is reported to be considering. Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn accused the government of deepening Britain’s economic involvement with the occupation.

A settlement trade ban and a procurement review are different instruments, and conflating them muddies what is actually on the table. A trade ban would target goods produced in settlements. A procurement review would ask whether the state should contract with corporate groups whose other arms operate there. The first is narrow and reasonably easy to draft. The second reaches the £1.56 billion emergency-services network that British police, fire and ambulance crews use every day — which is precisely why it is the harder of the two.

What is not yet known

Several things. Whether any UK department carried out due diligence on the UN listings before awarding or extending these contracts, and what it found. Whether the companies named dispute the characterisation of their Israeli operations — most have responded to similar listings in the past by contesting the methodology. And whether “at least 17” is a floor: the analysis rests on public procurement records, company filings and corporate disclosures, which capture ownership as declared rather than as arranged.

This site will update the piece if departments respond.

Sources

Original investigation by Al Jazeera, using procurement data compiled by Tussell; ICJ advisory opinion of July 2024; contract breakdown as reported by The Business Standard.