Bartosz Brzeziński & Marianne Gros
POLITICO / June 10, 2026
As the EU tries to crack down on violence by Jewish settlers, dates, tahini and oranges from the West Bank are entering the EU with a “Made in Israel” label.
Almost one in five Israeli-labelled food shipments entering the European Union are actually from settlements in the occupied West Bank or from the Golan Heights, according to a new investigation published Wednesday.
For two decades, the EU’s position has been that it can trade freely with Israel but not the communities Israel has built on land captured from Egypt, Jordan and Syria in the 1967 war. As for settlements in the Palestinian territories, they have been condemned by supporters of a two-state solution as undermining any eventual Palestinian state.
The probe by the U.S.-based legal advocacy group Global Echo Litigation Center concludes that the distinction often fails at Europe’s border.
According to the report, goods destined for Europe from the settlements, such as date fruits, citrus, and tahini, benefit from tariff breaks, organic labels and plant health certificates that EU and U.K. law reserve for food grown in Israel itself.
Shoppers across the continent have no way of knowing, Global Echo contends. The group said it is filing a lawsuit in the U.K. and planning litigation in other jurisdictions to force customs and consumer protection authorities to act.
Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are widely considered illegal under international law. The International Court of Justice reinforced that position in a 2024 advisory opinion that said countries should prevent trade ties that sustain Israel’s presence in the occupied territories. Israel rejects the court’s findings and considers the territories disputed.
Apart from the United States, the international community does not recognize Israel’s control of the Golan Heights, a mountainous area located in the north of Israel between Lebanon and Syria.
The NGO’s findings come just as the EU approved sanctions against some Israeli settlers over attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. Some governments say that’s not enough and have also been pushing for broader restrictions on trade and relations with Israel.
“By trading with Israel’s illegal settlements, the EU is bankrolling the abuses it condemns on a near daily basis, including ethnic cleansing and apartheid,” said Claudio Francavilla, associate director for EU advocacy at Human Rights Watch, which is publicizing the report. “There is no legal way to trade with illegal settlements,” he added.
In 2025, over 160 NGOs and trade unions, including Human Rights Watch, called on European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to “ban all trade and business between the EU and Israel’s illegal settlements” to comply with the International Court of Justice ruling, which says the settlements are illegal.
The European Commission did not respond to requests for comment sent Tuesday evening.
The Israeli government did not respond to requests for comment sent through multiple channels, including the agriculture ministry, the foreign affairs ministry and the embassy to the EU.
Three ways in
Global Echo reviewed more than 30,000 export documents, which it cross-referenced with Israeli government data on farm plots, field investigations and interviews with senior figures at Israeli exporters and packing houses.
More than 5,900 shipments of dates, citrus, tahini and other fresh produce were sent to the EU, the U.K., Norway and Switzerland between 2017 and 2026, the study found. It traced 17.2 percent of them to settlements in the West Bank or to territory annexed by Israel in the Golan Heights. Among shipments bound for the EU alone, the share rises to 19.2 percent, according to the report. Because exporters often disguise where their goods are grown, the group says the true figure is likely higher.
Of just over 2,000 customs invoices declaring Israeli origin to claim lower tariffs, nearly 17 percent covered goods from occupied territories worth €13.1 million, the report says.
The report describes three recurring methods. Some exporters list the real production site in an occupied territory and name Israel as the country of origin, it says. Others use a fake address inside Israel. Packing houses also mix produce from occupied territories with Israeli-grown food and ship everything as Israeli.
Even when the workarounds fail, and customs officers charge tariffs, the Israeli government pays the exporters back, the report says. A state program running since 2006 refunds the exact charge that European customs apply to goods from Israeli settlements and not to products from Israel itself. This renders tariffs on products from the Golan Heights and the West Bank “practically meaningless,” Global Echo contends. Citing Israeli budget records, the report estimates the payouts have totalled about €63 million.
Both EU and U.K. law require that plant health certificates be issued by the country where the food was grown. Yet Israeli authorities issued such certificates for food coming from occupied land in more than a quarter of the cases Global Echo said it reviewed, and customs authorities in the EU and the U.K. accepted them. The group also said it found 31 organic certificates that Secal, an Israeli certifier approved by the EU, issued for produce coming from occupied territories.
Consumers across European markets are misled as a result, the report argues. It points to tahini made in West Bank settlements by the Israeli brand Achva, which reaches shelves in jars labelled “Product of Israel.” That’s despite a 2019 ruling that food from settlements must be labelled as such. Achva did not respond to requests for comment.
A system built on trust
Under the EU’s trade agreement with Israel, and a parallel U.K. framework, most Israeli farm goods enter tariff-free, but that treatment does not extend to the land annexed by Israel in 1967.
Under a technical arrangement in place since 2005, Israeli exporters to the EU must list the postal code of the production site so customs can check whether goods come from illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories or the Golan Heights. Global Echo argues the system fails because it relies on exporters’ own declarations.
The European Commission proposed suspending trade provisions of its agreement with Israel in September 2025, after a review found Israel in breach of its human rights clause, but EU governments have not agreed to adopt the suspension. Spain went further on its own, with a national ban on imports from settlements in Palestinian territories that took effect at the end of 2025.
Bartosz Brzeziński is a senior reporter at POLITICO Europe
Marianne Gros is a sustainability reporter for POLITICO
