British MP Melanie Ward has asked the Charity Commission to investigate thirty-two UK charities that have donated at least £28m to projects in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
“Funding illegal Israeli settlements is not charitable activity. It is extremist activity,” she said.
Ward, the former chief executive of Medical Aid for Palestinians, has submitted a formal complaint to the Charity Commission regarding the charities, which she said are funding “illegal settlements.”
Ward said that if gift aid were claimed against the donations, as usually occurs, it would mean taxpayers had subsidized these settlements by at least £5m.
When questioned by Ward during Prime Minister’s Question Time on Wednesday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said: “settlements are a flagrant breach of international law, and no UK charity should be supporting them.”
He confirmed that the Middle East minister met with the Charity Commission to discuss the concerns.
“British businesses should have no involvement with illegal settlements,” he concluded.
In Ward’s letter to the Charity Commission, as reported by the Guardian, she provided the specific examples of Kasner Charitable Trust (KCT) and UK Toremet. KCT is said to have donated about £5.7m to the Bnei Akiva Yeshiva high school in Susya, in the West Bank, and UK Toremet donated £38,479 to Regavim, an NGO sanctioned this week by the UK.
On Tuesday, Australia, Canada, France, Norway, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom imposed coordinated sanctions on West Bank individuals they accuse of “horrific abuses against Palestinian civilians.”
The ministers’ statements – although with different wording – all condemn extremist settler violence in the West Bank. They accuse this phenomenon of driving forced displacement of Palestinian communities and undermining the viability of a two-state solution, as well as broader regional peace and security.
The UK is specifically imposing sanctions on six entities and one individual involved in “financing, enabling and carrying out settler violence in the occupied West Bank,” and Canada is listing two individuals and five entities.
Those designated individuals and entities will face asset freezes and possibly travel bans and Director Disqualifications.
