Food Grown in Illegal West Bank Settlements Sold in Australia as 'Produce of Israel', Trade Analysis Finds

Millions of dollars of food grown in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank has been shipped to Australia labelled as produce of Israel, a new analysis of trade data has shown. The human rights legal organisation Global Echo carried out the analysis using commercial documents and official trade data from the Israeli government and the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

The analysis found that at least US$5m (A$7.2m) of organic dates grown in illegal settlements across the West Bank have been shipped to Australia over the past eight years. Global Echo analysed 132 agricultural shipments from Israel to Australia between August 2018 and August 2026, and 85 of them, or 64%, contained settlement products.

The proportion of settlement goods is higher in more recent years. Between January 2025 and August 2026, 20 of the 24 shipments of dates to Australia analysed by Global Echo were sourced from settlements.

The settlements where dates bound for Australia are grown include Netiv Hagdud, Beit Haarava, Arvot Jericho, Hamra, Tomer, Mechora and Naaran. They are occupied parts of the West Bank, recognised as part of the state of Palestine by Australia, and Israel's settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law.

Israeli law obliges exports to label the origin of products from settlements as being from Israel, unless they are being exported to a country with laws that prohibit such labelling. There is no law in Australia banning the import of goods from settlement areas, and no requirement that those goods be labelled as originating from occupied land.

Global Echo's executive director, Emily Schaeffer Omer-Man, said Australian consumers would likely find it startling that settlement goods were on the Australian market and that they formed the majority of agricultural products labelled as imported from Israel in the shipments analysed. She said this means Australian consumers of Israeli dates and other Israeli agricultural products are quite likely contributing to the ongoing occupation and settlement of Palestinian land.

Australia's foreign minister, Penny Wong, told the Senate in September that Israel's settlements in Palestine's West Bank were illegal, and said the Australian government called on Israel to stop settlers from destroying properties, displacing families and attacking Palestinians. But she said Australia was not pursuing a blanket import ban on settlement goods, citing concerns about implementation and unintended consequences for Australian businesses. The UK, Spain, Belgium, Ireland and the Netherlands have either announced or imposed trade bans on settlement goods.

In June, Global Echo released a report, Importing Occupation, which detailed the practice of Israeli exporters to Europe hiding the origin of produce grown in occupied Palestine to qualify for tax breaks and bolster the settler economy. Schaeffer Omer-Man said the mislabelling of produce was neither aberration nor accident, and that agriculture has been used since the start of the settlement enterprise as a means of large-scale land grab and creeping annexation, openly declared by Israeli government officials and politicians over decades.

Sarah Sanbar, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, said international trade was one of the lifelines of illegal settlements. She said the settlements are not simply residential communities, that they are illegal and inextricably linked to human rights abuses. A Palestinian farmer who can no longer access his agricultural land because of settlement expansion may lose his livelihood, only to see a settlement-based agricultural business then profit off that very same land, she said.

A spokesperson for Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said Australia is pursuing further targeted measures, in coordination with international partners, to deter illegal settlements and settler violence. The Israeli embassy in Canberra did not respond to a request for comment. Announcing the UK's trade ban on settlement goods in September, foreign secretary Ed Miliband said settler terrorists were committing ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. Israel's ambassador to Australia, Hillel Newman, told The Australian newspaper at the time that the issue of settlements had been blown out of proportion and that Australia should not follow the UK's example.