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.
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"However, each company advertised real estate projects located both in Israel and in Israeli settlements beyond Israel’s internationally-recognized borders -including as recognized by the Government of Canada - in the occupied Palestinian territory, specifically the West Bank including East Jerusalem."
The Israeli companies are identified as Tivuch Shelly, Noam Homes, Meny Group, and Effi Capital.
Effi Capital regularly works with a Canadian marketing firm named the Cohen Group.
"The companies’ representations made to the Canadian public are materially false and misleading, made for the purpose of promoting the companies’ business interests, and thereby constitute 'reviewable conduct' under s.74.01(1)(a) of the Competition Act," the complaint said.
Emily Schaeffer Omer-Man, Global Echo's executive director, said that while the intent is to protect Canadians, the case at hand goes beyond the technical "mislabeling of goods".
"The same mechanism [for a complaint] is used when a product says sugar-free but actually there's some sugar in it," she told MEE.
"And I want to draw a distinction - a really strong distinction - between that and our situation. This is about the difference between purchasing land in Israel or purchasing property in Israel, and purchasing property in an area that is in an international armed conflict [and] an illegal occupation... Canadians could be complicit in war crimes."
Luxury properties in illegal Israeli settlements
A little over a year ago, Canada, alongside the UK and France, recognised a Palestinian state comprising the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza. The United Nations has considered those areas militarily occupied by Israel since 1967.
Last month, the Canadian government said Israel is "undermining the possibility of a two-state solution... amid unprecedented levels of settler violence and settlement expansion".
Yet Ottawa has not pursued measures to restrict Israeli land and property sales within the occupied Palestinian territories, Global Echo's complaint noted.
That lack of oversight and enforcement has created a juxtaposition between Canada's public foreign policy position and its actions on the ground.
Among several examples of Israeli-run properties advertised to Canadian buyers, the complaint points to a luxury residential building called Adumim Towers, located in the illegal settlement of Ma'ale Adumim in the occupied West Bank, just seven kilometres east of Jerusalem.
Ma'ale Adumim sits right along the boundary of the proposed Israeli E1 settlement project, which would effectively cut off Palestinian access to occupied East Jerusalem from the occupied West Bank. It would mean no tangible, contiguous Palestinian state could exist there, in the same way that the besieged Gaza Strip is cut off from the occupied West Bank.
"The Israeli Government’s decision to publish construction tenders for the E1 settlement project is unacceptable," Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in August.
"Businesses should not consider bidding for construction tenders," he warned. "They should be aware of legal and reputational consequences including the risk of involving themselves in serious breaches of international law."
Israel has since postponed the construction tender to avoid it being used for electioneering ahead of the 27 October elections.
The Adumim Towers, meanwhile, are described as offering "stunning panoramic views of Jerusalem" and "built with green technologies" to protect the environment.
But they are not open to just any buyer with means.
"The majority of these events screen for who can even attend them, asking questions like, 'Which shul or synagogue do you attend? What's the name of your rabbi?'" Schaeffer Omer-Man told MEE.
"They claim that they are doing this for security purposes, but we know from our investigations that they are screening out for the most part non-Jews, and certainly that they are screening out Palestinians."
'International law is very clear'
Basel Adra, the Palestinian lawyer and filmmaker who won an Academy Award in 2025 for his documentary No Other Land, told MEE on Wednesday that despite prospects for a Palestinian state growing bleaker by the day, the enforcement of international law by western powers can turn things around.
Adra currently serves as the head of community engagement for the Global Echo Litigation Center.
"I think these words that two-state solution is dead, or there is no solution... yeah, I know the Israeli government has been very good at changing facts and making it impossible, but I say that there is a huge power in the western world to enforce any solution," he said.
"The problem is not what the solution could be - the problem is that the decision-makers are not willing to have a solution," he added. "International law is very clear, and the world has power in Canada and America and Europe. They have power to enforce it through sanctions."
After the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, and Israel's subsequent genocide in Gaza, the occupied West Bank was not spared from an Israeli military crackdown that has so far killed more than 1,200 Palestinians, according to figures from the global charity Oxfam.
That death toll exceeds the number of Palestinians killed in the territory over the entirety of the last 17 years, Oxfam said.
Another 46,000 Palestinians were displaced by Israeli raids and removal orders in the occupied West Bank, after which many of the homes were demolished.
Violent Israeli settler attacks on Palestinian farmers, the elderly, solidarity activists, and journalists have also grown exponentially, and many are captured on video.
In July 2025, Adra's colleague on No Other Land and close friend Awdah Hathleen was killed by an Israeli settler.
Just last week, Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine was repeatedly kicked by settlers, and her bones were broken.
"They just want to, as much as they can, steal more and more lands... hundreds of illegal outposts have been created, and still construction doesn't stop," Adra told MEE.
"I know that they're using words like 'God gave us the land'.... but no, if they have no money, they can't continue."
One Palestinian Canadian, who is a party to the complaint and chose to withhold their name for fear of being prevented by Israel from visiting the occupied West Bank, told MEE that effective change comes from the bottom-up rather than the top-down.
"I don't trust in the Canadian institution to guide itself to materialise its own intentions" now that it has recognised a Palestinian state, the complainant said.
"It is opportunistic", given the tide has somewhat turned against Israel across much of the world, as polling has shown, the individual added.
"It naturally doesn't have legs, given the way international geopolitical relations work. But we can give it legs from these small actions."
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