Why the Israeli real-estate expo in London must be cancelled
If organisers of the “Great Israeli Real Estate Event” get their way, stolen Palestinian land will be traded on British soil this Sunday.
The event takes places annually in cities across the US and Canada, and has in recent years been coming to London, in an attempt to establish the capital as a regular feature of the expo. Despite keeping the London event under wraps in recent years, the secret is now out – and we’re taking action to stop it.
We know that we can cancel the event, because it has been cancelled elsewhere: in 2024, organisers pulled out of Brooklyn amid widespread protest. This battle can be won, and we know how to win it.
This week, the Palestinian Youth Movement launched the Stop Stolen Land Sales campaign, bringing together more than 100 organisations in condemning the event and calling on the British government to cancel it.
We understand this event as the continuation of more than a century of Zionist expansionism and dispossession of Palestinians, and we call on Britons to recognise and reverse the active role that Britain has historically played in supporting the worst extremes of Zionism, at great cost to our people.
The upcoming event promotes real-estate sales across historic Palestine, including in Gush Etzion, an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank, which Britain rightly views as illegal under international law. But our opposition to this and similar events goes far beyond the illegality of this settlement’s inclusion, as serious an issue as it is.
As Palestinians in the diaspora, we would oppose this event even if all the land being sold fell within a single plot in Haifa.
Red line
The sale of our ancestral land, where our people were massacred and sent into exile in a process that continues to this day is a red line. The real-estate event exemplifies the Zionist brazenness and impunity in flouting international law.
We are not merely outraged at the fact that there is an international market trading in our grandparents’ villages. We must understand this upcoming event as the continuation of a long legacy of British support for Zionist expansionism and Palestinian dispossession. The international market trading in our grandparents’ villages is by no means a new phenomenon.
No self-respecting people would accept such an unjust state of affairs. Why should we?
This support has taken various forms over the years, including the Balfour Declaration in 1917; Britain’s militarisation of Mandatory Palestine during the 1936-39 revolt, which sought to resist such land sales; and the creation of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), which is still registered as a charity here in Britain.
Since the late 19th century, the international market for Palestinian land has accelerated the dispossession and exile of our people. International fundraisers for institutions like the JNF have facilitated the forcible transfer of Palestinians, the destruction of our villages, and the expansion of Jewish settlements from the mandate period to the present day.
The Israeli legal system, inherited from the British Mandate, entrenches this dynamic within the central pillars of Israeli state doctrine. The 1950 Absentees’ Property Law abolished the property rights of Palestinians forced from our lands before or during the Nakba, and seized that land for the Israeli settler state, with many of those displaced becoming refugees in neighbouring countries.
The 1960 Israel Lands Law ensured that this seized land could not be bought back by Palestinians; only transferred between institutions fully committed to the Zionist colonial project, like the JNF.
Moral duty
The combined effect of these and other discriminatory laws, such as the 1950 Law of Return, means that a Jewish Briton with no ties to the land could attend the event on Sunday and leave owning property that was seized from our grandparents’ generation.
They could then move to that property, become an Israeli citizen, join the Israeli military and vote – all while our people languish in refugee camps in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, and face settler violence in the occupied West Bank or genocide in Gaza.
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No self-respecting people would accept such an unjust state of affairs. Why should we?
The same structures that have fractured our people for over 100 years and scattered us to places like London in the first place, are threatening to play out again this weekend, within our local communities. We must stop the real-estate expo from taking place and deter similar events from coming to Britain in the future.
Land-sale events are only secretive because they recognise on some level the underhandedness of their endeavour: they cannot trade in the open what was taken through coercion and force. We have a moral and legal right to challenge such abhorrence, up to and including mobilising at the event if it ultimately takes place.
We are the people of the land, and we refuse to see it disgraced by those for whom it is a mere trading opportunity. If the government does not cancel the event, we will.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
