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”, new analysis of trade data has shown. Human rights legal organisation Global Echo has analysed commercial documents and official trade data from the Israeli government and the Australian Bureau of Statistics, showing 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.
Of those, 85 – or 64% – contained settlement products. The proportion of settlement goods is higher in more recent years. Between January 2025 and August 2026, 20 of 24 shipments of dates to Australia analysed by Global Echo were sourced from settlements.
Israel’s settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law. The settlements where dates bound for Australia are grown – including Netiv Hagdud, Beit Haarava, Arvot Jericho, Hamra, Tomer, Mechora, and Naaran – are occupied parts of the West Bank, recognised as part of the state of Palestine by Australia. 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. The executive director of Global Echo, 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 being imported from Israel in the shipments that were analysed. But she said Australia was not pursuing a blanket import ban on settlement goods, as other countries such as the UK, Spain, Belgium, Ireland and the Netherlands have either announced or imposed.
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. This is not a secret; it has been declared openly by Israeli government officials and politicians over decades.” Schaeffer Omer-Man said import bans on settlement goods in Europe – Israel’s largest market – would lead exporters looking to other markets, potentially including Australia.
So it’s going to places like Australia, like Russia, like the US, places that are not demanding that settlement goods are treated any differently.” Sarah Sanbar, Human Rights Watch’s Israel/Palestine researcher, said international trade was “one of the lifelines” of illegal settlements. Israeli authorities restrict Palestinian access to land and natural resources, in particular water, restrict movement and access to land, and limit Palestinian development. In announcing the UK’s trade ban on settlement goods in September, its foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, said “settler terrorists” were committing ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.
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