A cross-party coalition of 15 United Kingdom Members of Parliament has formally submitted a letter to the UK government, calling for immediate intervention to block a major upcoming international travel expo in London from featuring promotional activities linked to an Israeli state agency heavily involved in the construction of illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land. The three-day World Travel Market (WTM) London, one of the global travel industry’s most high-profile annual gatherings, is scheduled to run from 3 to 5 November, with its opening day falling on a Tuesday. As first uncovered by Middle East Eye (MEE) last week, the event’s exhibition floor will host an official stand operated by the Israeli government’s national tourism office, which is co-shared by a network of Israeli commercial and public organizations. One of these featured partners is iTravelJerusalem, a tourism promotion initiative focused on Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem that falls under the oversight of the Jerusalem Development Authority (JDA). The JDA, a statutory body jointly governed by the Israeli national government and the Jerusalem municipal authority, leads urban development projects across the city and has been a central operational player in the planning, construction, and ongoing expansion of illegal Israeli settlements built on internationally recognized occupied Palestinian territory. The formal demand for government action was drafted and sent to UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband on Monday by Independent MP Adnan Hussain, and has garnered signatures from a diverse cross-section of parliamentary representatives spanning multiple political parties. Signatories include prominent Labour backbenchers John McDonnell and Kim Johnson, former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, all five sitting Green Party MPs (Carla Denyer, Ellie Chownes, Hannah Spencer, Sian Berry, and Adrian Ramsay), three additional Independent MPs (Shockat Adam, Iqbal Mohamed, and Ayoub Khan), and Scottish National Party MP Chris Law. The letter, whose full text was reviewed by MEE, lays out two core explicit requests: first, that the UK government immediately contact WTM London’s event organizers and mandate the full removal of any exhibitor and associated promotional materials whose presence at the expo would enable or advance the normalization of illegal Israeli settlements; and second, that ministers provide formal confirmation of concrete, actionable steps being taken to enforce the UK’s existing ban on the advertising of illegal settlements, rather than leaving the policy as a series of unenforced verbal commitments delivered only during parliamentary debates. The coordinated parliamentary push comes in the wake of a landmark policy announcement made by the UK government just one month prior, in which officials formally recognized Israel’s long-running occupation of Palestinian territories as illegal and unveiled a sweeping new package of sanctions targeting Israeli settlement operations. The letter’s signatories emphasize that the UK government cannot maintain any credible moral or political standing if it continues to publicly condemn the forced displacement of Palestinian communities, acknowledge the risk of ethnic cleansing in occupied Palestinian territories, and publicly vow to ban the promotion of illegal settlements on UK soil, while simultaneously permitting organizations directly implicated in these contested activities to leverage a high-profile international event hosted in central London to advance their work. To back up their demands, the MPs cite a 2025 official report published by the Office of the European Union Representative for the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which documents the JDA’s formal plans to evict roughly 40 Palestinian families from the Umm Haroun compound in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood to make way for a new 320-unit illegal settlement development. Additional documented JDA projects referenced in the letter include a 2020 Israeli government-approved Jerusalem cable car scheme that would require mass uprooting of local trees and the demolition of critical Palestinian civilian infrastructure including water, sewage, and telecommunications lines, as well as a planned large-scale settlement housing development directly adjacent to the Palestinian residential community of Beit Safafa in East Jerusalem. Palestinian Ambassador to the UK Hussam Zomlot issued a public statement responding to MEE’s initial reporting last Thursday, criticizing the upcoming WTM event for granting a platform to Israeli entities that he described as complicit in ethnic cleansing, and urging the UK government to translate its previously stated policy commitments into tangible enforcement that imposes real consequences for parties involved in illegal occupation and settlement activity. In their closing message to Foreign Secretary Miliband, the 15 MPs note that they will not accept a perfunctory response that merely restates the UK government’s existing public position, and demand a detailed, urgent reply outlining specific actionable steps that will be taken before WTM London opens its doors to attendees. “The question is no longer simply what the Government believes, but whether it is prepared to act on what it has said,” the letter stresses. As of the time of MEE’s publication, requests for comment submitted to both WTM London event organizers and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office had not received a formal response.
UK MPs urge government action over London event advertising settlement-linked Israeli agency
