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Amnesty: UK-Israel Trade Should Not Incentivize Israeli Apartheid against Palestinians

Palestinians works in a field in northern Gaza near the Israeli border. (Getty Images)
Palestinians works in a field in northern Gaza near the Israeli border. (Getty Images)
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Amnesty: UK-Israel Trade Should Not Incentivize Israeli Apartheid against Palestinians

Palestinians works in a field in northern Gaza near the Israeli border. (Getty Images)
Palestinians works in a field in northern Gaza near the Israeli border. (Getty Images)

Amnesty International United Kingdom warned that the new trade deal between Britain and Israel could allow the latter to consolidate its settler-colonialism and apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territories.

It stressed in a statement on Thursday that the new UK trade deal with Israel “must not be a betrayal of Palestinians’ human rights,” as it began negotiations on the deal.

Amnesty further warned that a “poorly-drafted deal could allow the Israeli authorities to consolidate unfounded claims to occupied Palestinian land, expand illegal settlements, and perpetuate the system of apartheid associated with this.”

It stressed that the faulty European Union-Israel trade arrangement is currently allowing Israeli exporters to pass off settlement goods as Israeli ones.

This free trade agreement is one of the UK’s trade continuity agreements – UK trade deals with countries, which had an agreement with the EU before January 1, 2021.

With some modifications, these deals generally replicate the terms of EU trade agreements, which the UK enjoyed before leaving the EU.

Amnesty International UK’s Economic Affairs Director Peter Frankental said a new trade deal with Israel must not be a betrayal of Palestinians’ human rights and must uphold the UK’s obligations under international law.

“In their haste to agree a shiny new trade deal with Israel, there’s a distinct danger that UK negotiators will fail to ensure absolute clarity over the precise origins of goods destined for the UK market,” he added.

Frankental stressed that a UK Free Trade Agreement needs to be distinctly better than this.

“The bottom line here is that UK-Israel trade should not incentivize Israel’s system of apartheid against the Palestinians.”

The statement pointed out that in line with international law, the UK government currently does not recognize as a legitimate part of Israel the territories that Israel has militarily occupied since June 1967 - a stance that is supported by the overwhelming majority of the international community and is reflected in numerous UN resolutions.

It expressed concern that a lack of clarity in the terms of a new trade deal could nevertheless see the UK treating goods and services sourced from Israeli settlements built on stolen Palestinian land as legitimate items of trade, thus tacitly supporting Israel’s wider occupation, settlement and annexation project.

A major source of concern, explained Amnesty’s briefing, is that the new trade deal is likely to closely follow the terms of an existing EU-Israel Association Agreement, which has proved unable to fully demarcate goods according to place of origin.

Amnesty emphasized that a renegotiated trade agreement needs to ensure that the UK can readily differentiate between goods originating in Israel and goods originating in the occupied Palestinian territories for the purpose of determining tariff and quota treatment.

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Arab World

Israeli Military Changes Initial Account of Gaza Aid Worker Killings

Palestinians mourn medics, who came under Israeli fire while on a rescue mission, after their bodies were recovered, according to the Red Crescent, at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip March 31, 2025. (Reuters)
Palestinians mourn medics, who came under Israeli fire while on a rescue mission, after their bodies were recovered, according to the Red Crescent, at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip March 31, 2025. (Reuters)
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Israeli Military Changes Initial Account of Gaza Aid Worker Killings

Palestinians mourn medics, who came under Israeli fire while on a rescue mission, after their bodies were recovered, according to the Red Crescent, at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip March 31, 2025. (Reuters)
Palestinians mourn medics, who came under Israeli fire while on a rescue mission, after their bodies were recovered, according to the Red Crescent, at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip March 31, 2025. (Reuters)

The Israeli military has provided new details that changed its initial account of the killing of 15 emergency workers near the southern Gaza city of Rafah last month but said investigators were still examining the evidence.

The 15 paramedics and emergency responders were shot dead on March 23 and buried in a shallow grave where their bodies were found a week later by officials from the United Nations and the Palestinian Red Crescent. Another man is still missing.

The military initially said soldiers had opened fire on vehicles that approached their position "suspiciously" in the dark without lights or markings. It said they killed nine fighters from Hamas and Islamic Jihad who were travelling in Palestinian Red Crescent vehicles.

But video recovered from the mobile phone of one of the dead men and published by the Palestinian Red Crescent showed emergency workers in their uniforms and clearly marked ambulances and fire trucks, with their lights on, being fired on by soldiers.

The only known survivor of the incident, Palestinian Red Crescent paramedic Munther Abed, also said he had seen soldiers opening fire on clearly marked emergency response vehicles.

An Israeli military official said late on Saturday the investigators were examining the video and conclusions were expected to be presented to army commanders on Sunday.

Israeli media briefed by the military reported that troops had identified at least six of the 15 dead as members of the groups. However, the official declined to provide any evidence or detail of how the identifications were made, saying he did not want to share classified information.

"According to our information, there were terrorists there but this investigation is not over," he told reporters at the briefing late on Saturday.

The UN and the Palestinian Red Cross have demanded an independent inquiry into the killing of the paramedics.

Red Crescent officials have said 17 paramedics and emergency workers from the Red Crescent, the Civil Emergency service and the UN had been dispatched to respond to reports of injuries from Israeli air strikes.

Apart from Abed, who was detained for several hours before being released, another worker is still missing.

OPENED FIRE

The military official said initial findings from the investigation showed troops had opened fire on a vehicle at around 4 a.m., killing two members of the Hamas internal security forces, and taking another prisoner, who the official said had admitted under interrogation to being in Hamas.

As time passed, several vehicles passed along the road until, at around 6 a.m., he said troops received word from aerial surveillance that a suspicious group of vehicles was approaching.

"They feel this is another incident like what happened at 4 a.m. and they opened fire," the official said.

He said aerial surveillance footage showed the troops were at some distance when they opened fire, and he denied reports that the troops handcuffed at least some of the paramedics and shot them at close range.

"It's not from close. They opened fire from afar," he said. "There's no mistreatment of the people there."

He said the soldiers had approached the group they had shot, identifying at least some of them as fighters. However, he did not explain what evidence had prompted the assessment.

"And in their eyes, they had an encounter with terrorists, that is a successful encounter with terrorists."

He said the troops had informed the UN of the incident on the same day and initially covered the bodies with camouflage netting until they could be recovered. UN officials did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

"There was no incident where the Israeli army tried to cover up. On the contrary, they called the UN immediately."

Later, when the UN did not immediately come to take the bodies, the soldiers covered them with sand to stop animals from getting at them, the official said.

He said the vehicles were pushed out of the way by a heavy engineering vehicle to clear the road but he could not explain why the vehicles were crushed by the engineering vehicle and then buried.