Israel’s Illegal Settlement Economy Behind the London Real Estate Fair

Freddie Ponton
21st Century Wire

Five days after Britain hit networks tied to settler violence in the West Bank with sanctions, the rest of the machine walked into Edgware United Synagogue and carried on selling. On 14 June, the Great Israeli Real Estate Event went ahead behind heavy police lines. Protesters packed the streets outside, politicians slammed it, and fourteen people got arrested. Inside, Israeli firms pitched homes, land and relocation packages tied straight into the settlement economy.

I followed the trail. It started with the deleted exhibitor list Emanuel Group CEO Emanuel Vatari posted. I ran it against company filings, Who Profits records, settlement databases, Israeli tenders, Knesset votes, old promotional material and what happened that day. Initial reporting named four settlement-linked outfits. Two more, Oron Group Investments & Holdings Ltd. and BRIGA, were also in the room, but nobody reported it. The whole thing was sold as legal advice, financial guidance and help moving to Israel.

VIDEO: footage showing Israeli companies Oron Group and Briga Real Estate marketing properties at the event held at Edgware United Synagogue in London on Sunday, June 15. (Source jewish_antizionist_action|Instagram)

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Promotional stuff mentioned Gush Etzion early on before they scrubbed it under pressure. The night before the event, the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians served a formal legal notice on the synagogue, warning of severe legal and reputational risks if it went ahead. Same script that’s played out in synagogues in New York and across North America. Different city, same game.

The Corporate Machinery

Oron Group lays it bare. Big publicly traded Israeli company with contracts from the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Office, Ministry of Defense, Airports Authority, Netivei Israel, Transport Ministry and Ministry of Construction and Housing. It runs the Meitarim Quarry on occupied land near Tene Omarim, pulling two and a half million tons of stone a year and running concrete and asphalt plants next to it. It expanded Highway 60 through the West Bank, carving under Beit Jala to link settlements to Jerusalem while bypassing Palestinian communities. It did housing expansion at Eshkolot and infrastructure for the Jerusalem Light Rail serving occupied East Jerusalem neighbourhoods.

READ MORE: London’s ‘Kosher’ Property Fair: Or How to Sell a War Crime with Canapés

In October 2025, Oron secured a NIS 310 million contract, about eighty-three million dollars, to expand Terminal 3 at Ben Gurion Airport. They rip stone out of occupied hills, build settler roads, and still collect big national projects at Israel’s main airport. The system is evidently feeding them.

Those West Bank contracts go through the Civil Administration and the Administration for Settlement Affairs, handed to Bezalel Smotrich after Netanyahu’s coalition deal in December 2022. Smotrich has boasted that the planning bodies under him have approved 51,370 housing units in the West Bank and poured hundreds of millions into infrastructure and land registration. Ten days before Edgware, on 4 June, he pushed a Knesset law giving tax breaks to fifty-nine West Bank settlements to stop any Palestinian state. On 14 June itself, while the developers worked on the synagogue floor, he signed a two-billion-shekel deal for six thousand apartments in Karnei Shomron plus roads, schools, transport and commercial areas. Karnei Shomron had already turned up in material linked to the London event. The state orders it, plans it and naturally protects it.

Mizrahi-Tefahot Bank keeps the cash flowing. Its London branch at 30 Old Broad Street pushes Israeli mortgages to foreign buyers. The bank runs branches inside settlements and finances the councils and builders. Norway’s sovereign wealth fund cut ties with them in 2025 after its ethics council concluded those services were essential for illegal settlement construction. In Britain, it still operates as a normal regulated bank and sponsored an Israel-Britain Chamber event at the ambassador’s residence in February 2025. The occupation money moves through the City clean, despite the UK’s own guidance “strongly advising” businesses against economic activity in illegal settlements.

The Gaza Frontier

Harey Zahav, a hard‑line settlement developer, a company that built its business in Judea and Samaria and the southern West Bank, doesn’t pretend. It is drawing up plans for settlements in the Gaza Strip. and sells straight into Negohot, Kfar Eldad, Karnei Shomron, Immanuel and Tene Omarim. In February 2026, it pushed “Judea & Samaria” properties to overseas buyers and bragged about fifteen hundred homes delivered. Back in December 2023, while Gaza was being smashed, it posted beachfront villas and condos with the line “A house on the beach is not a dream.” Ze’ev Epshtein called it a “joke gone wrong” but said they would build if the government opened tenders, “as right-wingers, that’s also our approach.”

That moment was the early version. By early 2026, Donald Trump and Jared Kushner talked about Gaza like prime waterfront. At Davos, Kushner rolled out “Board of Peace” plans for New Gaza and New Rafah, up to 180 skyscrapers, a new airport and port, industrial parks and residential strips along the sea, a twenty-five billion dollar opportunity tied to “demilitarisation” and a new governance setup. Smotrich called Gaza a real estate bonanza, said they paid a lot for this war, and talked about dividing the land into percentages. A business plan was already on Trump’s desk. Destruction done. Now building.

A company that floated beach houses on the ruins was operating in a world where the US president, his son-in-law and Israel’s finance minister treated the strip as the next coastal development. What is shocking is the thought that Harey Zahav’s people were inside Edgware, likely pitching the next round.

The London Connection

If Harey Zahav shows the ideological edge of the settlement market, Africa Israel Residences shows how deep into the Israeli corporate establishment that market runs. Alongside the hard‑line settlement outfits, one of Israel’s most “respectable” real estate brands also turned up at the Edgware United Synagogue carrying the legacy of billionaire Lev Leviev’s empire. Leviev is the diamond and real‑estate billionaire who built Africa Israel Residences into a flagship conglomerate, whose construction subsidiaries have spent years building in West Bank settlements despite public pledges to stop. Leviev’s network has faced years of scrutiny over settlement ties, sanctions campaigns and links to Netanyahu, Putin and Jared Kushner. In 2015, Kushner Companies paid $295 million for floors of the former New York Times building, buying directly from Leviev’s Africa Israel Investments, a deal later reported to have been examined by federal prosecutors in the Mueller investigation. The company claimed in 2014 it would stop building beyond the Green Line. Yet here it was at an event slammed for exactly that. The rebrand never stuck. It evolved.

BRIGA keeps a lower profile. Big settlement databases have little on this company. Family developer working in central Israel around Netanya. Its presence at Edgware shows how wide the circuit has grown. It now pulls in players who once stayed away.

The organisers tried to muddy it. My Home in Israel said they weren’t marketing over the Green Line. Defenders accused critics of stirring trouble. Deleted lists, scrubbed Gush Etzion references, Guardian reporting, and Middle East Eye coverage showed otherwise. These fairs run the same way. Aliyah talks, investment promises, careful vagueness, settlement properties through the right booths. Edgware was undeniably the London stop.

Britain sanctioned the violent outfits on 9 June. That violence is not some freak add-on, but one edge of a machine kept alive by developers, banks, quarries, roads, tenders and land deals. Sanction the gunmen, leave the commercial side untouched, and it keeps running. The companies in Edgware rip that British separation apart. One quarries occupied land was used to expand Israel’s main airport. Another financial settlement mortgages from a London office. Another set of tested beachfront villas on the ruins of Gaza. Another sits in the orbit of a billionaire wired to Netanyahu and Kushner.

Oron Group and BRIGA belong to the pattern. Colonizing Palestinian land gets outsourced, packaged, financed and sold by companies that see the money, as long as governments like Britain’s pretend the violence and the business can be separated. Edgware made that lie impossible to miss.

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Source: https://21stcenturywire.com/2026/06/15/israels-illegal-settlement-economy-behind-the-london-real-estate-fair/