[News] UN List of Firms Aiding Israel’s Settlements was Dead on Arrival

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/02/21/un-list-of-firms-aiding-israels-settlements-was-dead-on-arrival/ 



  UN List of Firms Aiding Israel’s Settlements was Dead on Arrival

by Jonathan Cook <https://www.counterpunch.org/author/jonathan-cook/> - 
February 21, 2020
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/Nazareth./

After lengthy delays, the United Nations finally published a database 
last week of businesses that have been profiting from Israel’s illegal 
settlement activity in the West Bank.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, announced 
that 112 major companies had been identified as operating in Israeli 
settlements in ways that violate human rights.

Aside from major Israeli banks, transport services, cafes, supermarkets, 
and energy, building and telecoms firms, prominent international 
businesses include Airbnb, booking.com <http://booking.com/>, Motorola, 
Trip Advisor, JCB, Expedia and General Mills.

Human Rights Watch, a global watchdog, noted in response to the list’s 
publication that the settlements violate the Fourth Geneva Convention. 
It argued that the firms’ activities mean they have aided “in the 
commission of war crimes”.

The companies’ presence in the settlements has helped to blur the 
distinction between Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. 
That in turn has normalised the erosion of international law and 
subverted a long-held international consensus on establishing a viable 
Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Work on compiling the database began four years ago. But both Israel and 
the United States put strong pressure on the UN in the hope of 
preventing the list from ever seeing the light of day.

The UN body’s belated assertiveness looks suspiciously like a rebuke to 
the Trump administration for releasing this month its Middle East 
“peace” plan. It green-lights Israel’s annexation of the settlements and 
the most fertile and water-rich areas of the West Bank.

In response to the database, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 
threatened to intensify his country’s interference in US politics. He 
noted that his officials had already “promoted laws in most US states, 
which determine that strong action is to be taken against whoever tries 
to boycott Israel.”

He was backed by all Israel’s main Jewish parties. Amir Peretz, leader 
of the centre-left Labour party, vowed to “work in every forum to repeal 
this decision”. And Yair Lapid, a leader of Blue and White, the main 
rival to Netanyahu, called Bachelet the “commissioner for terrorists’ 
rights”.

Meanwhile, Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, accused the UN of 
“unrelenting anti-Israel bias” and of aiding the international boycott, 
divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

In fact, the UN is not taking any meaningful action against the 112 
companies, nor is it encouraging others to do so. The list is intended 
as a shaming tool – highlighting that these firms have condoned, through 
their commercial activities, Israel’s land and resource theft from 
Palestinians.

The UN has even taken an extremely narrow view of what constitutes 
involvement with the settlements. For example, it excluded organisations 
like FIFA, the international football association, whose Israeli 
subsidiary includes six settlement teams.

This week it also emerged that Amazon was aiding the settlements, though 
it is not named on the list. The online retail giant delivers for free 
to addresses in West Bank settlements, while imposing large shipping 
charges on Palestinians living nearby.

One of the identified companies, Airbnb, announced in late 2018 that it 
would remove from its accommodation bookings website all settlement 
properties – presumably to avoid being publicly embarrassed.

But a short time later Airbnb backed down. It is hard to imagine the 
decision was taken on strictly commercial grounds: the firm has only 200 
settlement properties on its site.

A more realistic conclusion is that Airbnb feared the backlash from 
Washington and was intimated by a barrage of accusations from pro-Israel 
groups that its new policy was anti-semitic.

In fact, the UN’s timing could not be more tragic. The list looks more 
like the last gasp of those who – through their negligence over nearly 
three decades – have enabled the two-state solution to wither to nothing.

Trump’s so-called peace plan could afford to be so one-sided only 
because western powers had already allowed Israel to void any hope of 
Palestinian statehood through decades of unremitting settlement 
expansion. Today, nearly 700,000 Israeli Jews are housed on occupied 
Palestinian territory.

On Monday European Union foreign ministers met to respond to the plan, 
but predictably they agreed to postpone a decision until after Israel’s 
election on March 2. Tepid opposition is probably the best that can 
ultimately be expected.

The actions of several European states continue to speak much louder 
than any words.

Last Friday, Germany followed the Czech Republic in filing a petition to 
the International Criminal Court at The Hague siding with Israel as the 
court deliberates whether to prosecute Israeli officials for war crimes, 
including over the establishment of settlements.

Germany does not appear to deny that the settlements are war crimes. 
Instead, it hopes to block the case on dubious technical grounds: that 
despite Palestine signing up to the Rome Statute, which established the 
Hague court, it is not yet a fully fledged state.

So far Austria, Hungary, Australia and Brazil appear to be following suit.

But if Palestine lacks the proper attributes of statehood, it is because 
the US and Europe, including Germany, have consistently broken promises 
to the Palestinians.

They not only refused to intervene to save the two-state solution, but 
rewarded Israel with trade deals and diplomatic and financial 
incentives, even as Israel eroded the institutional and territorial 
integrity necessary for Palestinian self-rule.

Germany’s stance, like that of the rest of Europe, is hypocritical. They 
have claimed opposition to Israel’s endless settlement expansion, and 
now to Trump’s plan, but their actions have paved the way to the 
annexation of the West Bank the plan condones.

Back in November the European Court of Justice finally ruled that 
products made in West Bank settlements – using illegally seized 
Palestinian resources on illegally seized Palestinian land – should not 
be labelled deceptively as “Made in Israel”.

And yet European countries are still postponing implementation of the 
decision. Instead, some of them are legislating against their citizens’ 
right to express support for a settlement boycott.

Similarly, Europe and North America continue to afford the Jewish 
National Fund, an entity that finances settlement-building, “charitable 
status”, giving it tax breaks as it raises funds inside their jurisdictions.

The Israeli media is full of stories of how the JNF actively assists 
extremist settler groups in evicting Palestinians from homes in East 
Jerusalem. But Britain and other states are blocking legal efforts to 
challenge the JNF’s special status.

Soon, it seems, Europe will no longer have to worry about its hypocrisy 
being so visible. Once the settlements have been annexed, as the Trump 
administration intends, the EU can set aside its ineffectual agonising 
and treat the settlements as irrevocably Israeli – just as it has done 
in practice with the Israeli “neighbourhoods” of occupied East Jerusalem.

Then, the UN’s list of shame can join decades’ worth of condemnatory 
resolutions that have been quietly gathering dust.

/A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi./

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