UK considered suspending Israel trade agreement last summer: Report

The UK government considered suspending its trade agreement with Israel after the Department for Business and Trade conducted an impact assessment on pausing the arrangement last summer, British broadcaster Sky News reported Thursday, Anadolu reports.

The assessment, carried out in August, examined the potential effects of suspending the UK-Israel Trade and Partnership Agreement, a 2019 post-Brexit continuity arrangement under which Israeli imports receive preferential tariff treatment and mostly enter the UK tariff-free.

Impact assessments examine issues including the economic and social effects of potential policy changes and are understood to be frequently conducted as part of trade policy.

The assessment was also understood to have been carried out as one of the UK’s responses to the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

The move came after then-Foreign Secretary David Lammy described comments by Israeli ministers about “cleansing” Gaza and “destroying what’s left” as “repellent” and “monstrous.”

The existing UK-Israel Trade and Partnership Agreement, however, remains in force.

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No official explanation was given for why the agreement was not suspended. But then-Trade Minister Chris Bryant told the House of Commons in October that “exports to Israel support thousands of jobs in the UK.”

Suspending preferential trade treatment “risks unpredictable consequences and significant economic disruption for British businesses” he added in response to a written question.

Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Emily Thornberry has said Britain should move much faster to sever economic links with illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and align itself with a growing European push against settlement trade.

Thornberry previously urged new Prime Minister Andy Burnham to ensure that Britain provides no financial or commercial support to settlements that she said were entrenching Israel’s occupation and undermining prospects for a Palestinian state.

“My advice, if Andy Burnham wanted to hear it, would be that we should be … moving much faster to find a way in which we can ensure that we do not put any money, any resources, any insurance, any finance, any goods, anything to help with the (illegal Israeli settlement) development in the West Bank, and we buy no goods from the West Bank,” she told Anadolu.

Israel launched its war on the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, 2023. A ceasefire agreement took effect on Oct. 10, 2025, after the war killed more than 73,000 Palestinians and injured over 173,000 others, according to Palestinian figures.

Palestinian authorities say Israel has continued to violate the ceasefire through daily bombardments, tightening the blockade and restricting the entry of humanitarian, food and medical aid.