UK Public Contracts Worth £2.1 Billion Held by Firms Linked to Israeli Settlements, Investigation Finds

Seventeen companies tied to illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank hold United Kingdom public-sector contracts worth more than £2.1 billion, according to an Al Jazeera investigation. It flows to firms the United Nations Human Rights Office has already named over settlement-related business activity.

The numbers come from Tussell, a public procurement analytics firm that shared its data with Al Jazeera. The 17 companies and entities hold 125 separate UK public-sector contracts with a combined award value of £2.129 billion ($2.89 billion).

Where the money goes

The biggest chunk by far, more than £1.7 billion, traces back to Motorola Solutions, the American technology giant, mainly through its British subsidiary Airwave Solutions. The Home Office awarded Airwave a £1.562 billion contract extension to run the secure communications network used by police, fire and ambulance services across England, Scotland and Wales, according to Al Jazeera and TBS News. UN records cited in the investigation show Motorola technology, including command-and-control and surveillance systems, embedded in security infrastructure across settlements such as Hebron, Karmei Tzur and Ariel, plus the Israeli Civil Administration and police.

Four other corporate groups make up the rest: Germany's Heidelberg Materials, France's Egis, Spain's train manufacturer CAF, and China's Fosun conglomerate. Five Heidelberg Materials companies hold 25 UK contracts worth £184.79 million, largely through Hanson Quarry Products Europe, whose Israeli subsidiary Hanson Israel owns the Nahal Raba quarry on Palestinian land, according to TBS News. Heidelberg told the outlet that Hanson Israel stopped all activity at the quarry and associated plants back in 2023, leaving only security personnel on site.

Egis and CAF are tied to Jerusalem's light-rail expansion, a project critics say knits settlements into the city while cutting through Palestinian neighborhoods. Fosun's subsidiary Breas Medical takes UK public money too, while Fosun also owns Ahava, the Israeli cosmetics maker operating out of the Mitzpe Shalem settlement, an arrangement the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign in the UK has repeatedly condemned.

A legal gray zone, not a settled verdict

Stephen Humphreys, a professor of international law at the London School of Economics, told Al Jazeera that "evidence is growing that the UK may be in breach of its international obligations" by continuing to contract with entities the UN has flagged. No UK investigation into these specific contracts has been announced, and no charges or formal findings exist. The International Court of Justice did rule in July 2024 that Israel's continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territories is unlawful, giving Humphreys's argument some grounding, but how that ruling translates into UK procurement law remains contested and untested in British courts.

Labour's internal fight

More than 140 Labour MPs are calling on the government to ban trade with illegal Israeli settlements, a move Prime Minister Andy Burnham is considering, according to the Saudi Gazette and TBS News. Supporters are preparing to submit a motion at Labour's annual conference next month, and Burnham is expected to announce his position before the gathering to prevent the issue from overshadowing his first party conference as leader.

Labour Friends of Israel is pushing back hard. The group warns that distinguishing settlement-made goods from other Israeli products would be "practically impossible" and that any ban risks becoming a de facto boycott of Israel as a whole. Supply chains for construction materials, tech components and manufactured goods are notoriously hard to trace to a specific point of origin, and a policy meant to target settlements specifically could easily sweep in legitimate Israeli commerce if enforcement isn't airtight. Whether that risk is manageable or is a fatal flaw in the proposal is exactly the fight playing out inside Labour right now.

The bigger diplomatic backdrop

This contracts story doesn't exist in isolation. In August, Israel's Land Authority published tenders for 1,234 housing units in the E1 settlement zone, a project that would connect Maale Adumim to Jerusalem and effectively split the West Bank in two, according to Breitbart's report on UPI wire coverage. Britain joined Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Norway in a joint statement demanding Israel rescind the tenders, and London summoned Israel's charge d'affaires over the plan. Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir told British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband that London's Mandate for Palestine "ended in 1948," and mocked Britain's own domestic politics. This is a separate diplomatic flare-up from the procurement investigation, not a cause-and-effect relationship, but it shows the same underlying rift over settlements playing out on two fronts at once, government contracts on one side, land tenders and diplomacy on the other.

The open question is what Burnham actually decides. If he backs a settlement-trade ban, the £2.1 billion in existing contracts, especially the Airwave deal underpinning Britain's emergency-services radio network, becomes the immediate test case for how far that policy reaches.