The research carried out by UK organization Corporate Watch found that Israeli regime’s companies mislabel their product as ‘Made in Israel’ when the produce is coming from occupied territories.

It said Israeli regime controls the occupied territories militarily so much so that it can easily take produce from illegal settlements into packing houses in Israel or mislabel it right on the spot inside settlements.

As an example, the research singles out Sainsbury’s supermarket chains, where their supplier EDOM provides them with produce from illegal Israeli settlements and labelling them as 'Produce of Israel'.

Campaigners have been calling on Sainsbury’s to ban trade with Israeli companies profiting from the occupation of Palestine.

However, the British government insists that its current policy of merely labeling illegal settlement produce is sufficient.

Minister for the Middle East, Alastair Burt publicly dismissed, on 30 October 2012, demands for a ban on trade with Israeli regime’s illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

In response to a question from Former Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw, Minister Burt confirmed "the policy of successive UK governments has been not to ban the import of settlement produce, but to support the policy of voluntary labelling to ensure consumers are fully informed."

While labeling is necessary, it allows the British government to avoid its obligations by turning the issue of trade and profits from illegal Israeli settlements into one of consumer choice, rather than international law.

This is while that the international community considers the establishment of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories illegal under international law.

Israeli regime controls the occupied West Bank through a complex web of illegal settlements, with their associated infrastructure of separate roads, security buffer zones, checkpoints and the apartheid Wall.

Illegal settlements are a cornerstone of Israel’s expansionist policies aimed at confiscating more Palestinian farm lands and entrenching the military occupation.

With over 600,000 Israeli citizens living in illegal settlements, Israel effectively controls over 40 percent of the occupied West Bank including important agricultural and water resources.

Gaza, on the other hand, where more than 1.7 million Palestinians are confined to a 40km long and 9km wide stretch of land, is blockaded by Israel’s military with devastating effects to the population.

Successive Israeli regimes’ policies ensure that Palestinian communities are confined to isolated enclaves comparable to the Bantustans of apartheid era South Africa.

On the ground this has meant the destruction of the Palestinian agricultural sector through land confiscations, theft of resources, most importantly water, and the barring of agricultural exports from Gaza.

Israeli agricultural companies are part and parcel of this system of control over the Palestinian occupied territories and profit from the destruction of the Palestinian agricultural sector.

Now, as the UK government refuses to take meaningful action and no western government has been willing to call Israel to account for its crimes, such campaigns are the only means available to civil society to challenge UK and EU support for Israel’s policies of aggression.