A new investigation from Middle East Eye has uncovered that the upcoming World Travel Market (WTM) London, one of the global travel industry’s flagship annual gatherings running from 3 to 5 November, will host an official Israeli government tourism booth that showcases entities directly linked to illegal Israeli settlement construction and Palestinian dispossession in occupied East Jerusalem. Publicly listed on WTM London’s official event directory, the shared Israeli national booth includes the iTravelJerusalem tourism promotion platform, which falls under the full operational management of the Jerusalem Development Authority (JDA) — a statutory agency jointly overseen by the Israeli national government and the Jerusalem municipal authority. Long documented by human rights groups and international governing bodies, the JDA has for years spearheaded initiatives to seize Palestinian land in occupied East Jerusalem for settlement expansion and state-backed tourism projects that displace local Palestinian communities. Back in 2020, the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement published a detailed statement outlining how the JDA illegally expropriated privately owned Palestinian land to build so-called “Biblical parks”, actions that have displaced hundreds of Palestinian residents and put hundreds more at imminent risk of forced eviction, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions. The agency has also played a central role in expanding major illegal settlement outposts across East Jerusalem, including the large Gilo settlement complex. A 2025 official report released by the European Union’s Representative Office for the West Bank and Gaza Strip further confirms the JDA’s formal plans to evict roughly 40 Palestinian families residing in the Umm Haroun compound in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, to make space for a new 320-unit illegal settlement housing development. Additional well-documented JDA initiatives that have drawn widespread condemnation include a state-approved 2020 cable car project in Jerusalem, which will require mass uprooting of native trees and the destruction of critical local water, sewage and telecommunications infrastructure. The project has moved forward despite fierce pushback from local Palestinian communities and the withdrawal of four international partner firms. Israeli heritage rights NGO Emek Shaveh has publicly denounced the cable car scheme, noting that its core purpose is not tourism development, but to cement settler control over Jerusalem’s historic core, push remaining Palestinian residents out of the city’s Historic Basin, and erase the area’s longstanding Palestinian cultural identity. Two other controversial JDA projects are also moving ahead: a large new settlement housing development adjacent to the Palestinian neighbourhood of Beit Safafa in East Jerusalem, and the high-profile renovation of the Mamilla Pool tourist site near Jerusalem’s Old City, which critics warn will desecrate a centuries-old Palestinian Muslim cemetery. Also listed as a participant on the Israeli WTM London booth is Africa Israel Hotels, a subsidiary of the Africa Israel Group, a firm with a long track record of involvement in illegal settlement construction projects across the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The revelation of the upcoming WTM London booth comes amid a rapidly shifting UK policy landscape around illegal Israeli settlement advertising. Earlier this year, Middle East Eye exposed a London-based Israeli real estate expo that advertised properties built on illegal settlement land, prompting the British government to refer the event to the UK’s advertising regulatory body. MEE later revealed in August that the regulator had declined to open a formal investigation into the expo, a move that drew public criticism from senior UK officials. In a parliamentary address delivered in September, UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband explicitly condemned the 2024 settlement property expo held just outside London, vowing to implement a full ban on all advertising of illegal Israeli settlements across the UK to prevent similar events from taking place in the future. The new controversy also echoes a 2010 ruling from the UK advertising regulator, which banned a prior Israeli tourist office campaign that featured imagery of East Jerusalem, on the grounds that the ad misleadingly implied occupied East Jerusalem was an official part of the State of Israel, at a time when the final status of the territory remains the subject of unresolved international negotiation. At the time of MEE’s publication, WTM London event organisers had not responded to repeated requests for comment on the presence of JDA-linked entities at the 2024 event. The official WTM London website markets the gathering as the world’s most influential travel and tourism industry event, designed to connect global travel professionals, foster new industry ideas, and build cross-border commercial partnerships.