Property sales of illegal Israeli settlement lands challenged in complaint in Canada

A group of Canadians is calling on Canada's Competition Bureau, the country's fair marketing regulator, to investigate whether four Israeli real estate companies and a Canadian marketing firm lured Canadian buyers with false advertising when they promoted properties for sale on occupied land intended for a Palestinian state. The complaint, viewed by Middle East Eye, was filed in Ottawa on Wednesday by the Global Echo Litigation Center, a group formed in 2018 to pursue “strategic litigation in courts around the world against economic actors complicit in violations of Palestinian human rights”, in conjunction with Canadian Lawyers for International Human Rights. The six complainants, described to MEE as Palestinians and Jews, have chosen to withhold their names. The 127-page complaint looked at Israeli real estate events held in Canada's cities of Montreal and Toronto, all held between March 2024 and May 2026. "The general impression of a 'credulous and inexperienced' Canadian consumer would be that the companies’ properties exhibited at these events were located in Israel," the complaint said. Read more: Property sales of illegal Israeli settlement lands challenged in complaint in Canada A Star of David is painted on a structure on the outskirts of the Palestinian village of Turmus Ayya, northeast of Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on 21 October 2026 (Zain Jaafar/AFP)