THIRTY-TWO charities in England and Wales have donated at least £28 million to illegal Israeli settlements, a Scottish Labour MP has alleged.
Melanie Ward has said she has submitted a formal complaint to the Charity Commission after she came across evidence that illegal Israeli settlements have been receiving donations from the UK.
The Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy Labour MP also claimed that if gift aid were claimed against the donations in the usual way, £5.6m worth of taxpayers' money could have gone towards the settlements.
It comes after campaigners called for the UK Government to intervene in an event in London, which is advertising the sale of land in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are illegal under international law and have been condemned by the UN Security Council and the International Court of Justice.
Ward said she found “at least” 32 charities that have sent £28m to settlements in recent years while she was working with Israeli human researchers.
In her letter to the Charity Commission, the Labour MP said any activity which supports the maintenance and expansion of Israeli settlements is “extremist” and not to the benefit of the UK.
She wrote: “The existence and growth of Israeli settlements in the state of Palestine is globally recognised as one of the major impediments to peace.
“Any activity which supports the maintenance and the expansion of Israeli settlements – such as that funded by these 32 ‘charities’ – is extremist and not of benefit to the UK public.
“Further, it risks being materially and financially used in pursuance of breaches of international law.”
Among the charities named by Ward are the Kasner Charitable Trust (KCT) and UK Toremet, which The Guardian revealed last year had together donated around £5.7m to a high school in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Ward said researchers examined documents in English and Hebrew and found that Kasner had also donated to a yeshiva in the Palestinian city of Hebron, according to The Guardian.
UK Toremet also donated £38,479 to Regavim, an extremist pro-settler group which the EU has imposed sanctions on for supporting the destruction of Palestinian homes.
On Tuesday, the Foreign Secretary, Yvette Cooper, announced that the Charity Commission will investigate UK charities’ links to settlements.
However, Rohan Talbot, Medical Aid for Palestinians director of advocacy and campaigns, said the measures do not go far enough.
He said: “These new sanctions are necessary but wholly insufficient. They will barely move the dial on ending Israeli annexation and apartheid in the West Bank and fall well below the Government’s obligations to uphold international law.”
In March, The National revealed that the Jewish National Fund (JNF), a registered charity in Scotland and a daughter branch of the Israeli charity Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF), helped fund illegal settlements.
JNF Scotland states that it raises “funds in Scotland exclusively for JNF KKL projects in Israel”, including “land reclamation, tree planting, and water management”.
Projects carried out by the KKL-JNF have included funding illegal settlements. Israeli journalist Raviv Drucker previously published documents showing that the KKL invested an equivalent of around £12 million in illegal settlements between 2002 and 2013.
The Scottish branch of the organisation is facing questions over where its money is being spent after it recorded a huge increase in finances at a time when Israel has been ramping up annexation of the West Bank.
In 2025, JNF Scotland reported a total of £1.7m in income. This marked a dramatic increase of around 1730% from £92,933 in 2024 to £60,890 in 2023.
The charity’s 2025 accounts state that “in the second half of the financial year the company received two donations of £1,500,000 and £100,000 respectively for specific KKL projects in Israel”. It adds: “These were both designated as restricted funds and were remitted in their entirety to KKL Israel.”
The projects are not specified, but KKL Israel has continued to fund multiple settlement projects across the occupied West Bank and Golan Heights, in Syria. In 2024, these settlements were found to be in violation of international law by the International Court of Justice.
Elsewhere, The Great Israeli Real Estate Event, scheduled to take place in London on Sunday, has faced criticism for openly advertising land for sale in Israeli settlements.
Amnesty International has called on the UK Government to take “immediate action” to prevent the event from going ahead, stating it is attempting to normalise illegal settlements by marketing them alongside properties in mainstream Israeli cities.
Some 140 Labour MPs have also told the UK Government this week that it must end its “unacceptable” failure to act against Israel's war crimes and ban all trade with illegal settlements.
