UK considered suspending Israel trade deal amid Gaza famine

At the time Israel was deliberately starving Palestinians in Gaza, leading to famine in the besieged territory in August 2025. The Department for Business and Trade carried out an impact assessment that same month under former Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The review examined the possible suspension of the UK-Israel Trade Partnership Agreement, which allows most Israeli goods to enter Britain tariff-free.

Ministers commissioned the assessment as pressure mounted over Israel’s actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Yet the government neither announced the review nor disclosed its findings. It continued to avoid a decision even as Israel deliberately imposed conditions that produced famine in Gaza and Israeli ministers openly advocated the territory’s destruction and ethnic cleansing.

Labour had suspended negotiations on an expanded free trade agreement with Israel three months earlier. Then Foreign Secretary David Lammy described remarks by Israel’s defence minister about “cleansing” Gaza and “destroying what’s left” as “repellent” and “monstrous.” But the existing 2019 agreement remained untouched.

The then Trade Minister Chris Bryant defended that position in October, telling Parliament that “exports to Israel support thousands of jobs in the UK.” Suspending preferential treatment, he said, “risks unpredictable consequences and significant economic disruption for British businesses.” Bryant has longstanding links to Labour Friends of Israel, a pro-Israeli lobby group.

The government did not mention the assessment when MPs questioned ministers about the trade agreement. The department disclosed its existence only after Global Justice Now submitted a freedom of information request. Officials refused to release the assessment’s scope, findings, timetable or any decisions arising from it. The review coincided with mounting international pressure for economic sanctions on Israel, and came more than a year after the International Court of Justice said states must prevent trade or other actions that sustain Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise in occupied Palestinian territory.