[News] How western tourism giants illegally enrich Israeli settlements on stolen land

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 How western tourism giants illegally enrich Israeli settlements on stolen
land

Before booking your summer vacation, be aware that major western tourism
operators willfully fund and legitimize illegal Israeli settlements in
occupied Palestinian territories, actively contributing to human rights
violations and war crimes.

Kit Klarenberg <https://thecradle.co/authors/kit-klarenberg>

JUN 12, 2024 -
https://thecradle.co/articles/how-western-tourism-giants-illegally-enrich-israeli-settlements-on-stolen-land
Photo Credit: The Cradle

On 23 May, Netherlands-based European Legal Support Centre (ELSC)
reportedly filed a criminal complaint
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/rights-groups-file-complaint-against-bookingcom-over-israeli-settlement-listings>
against Booking.com in Holland. The company, known for providing short- and
long-term vacation booking services, is accused of money laundering linked
to Israeli war crimes and profiteering from the occupation state's illegal
settlement expansion projects. Booking.com is alleged to advertise
accommodations and “experiences” in illegally occupied Palestinian
territories.

The complaint highlights Booking.com's alleged complicity in Israeli
genocide, as detailed in a report by Don’t Buy Into Occupation
<https://dontbuyintooccupation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/2023_DBIO-III-Report_11-December-2023.pdf>
(DBIO), a coalition of 25 European and Palestinian NGOs, including the
ELSC.

The report exposes the involvement of European financial institutions in
funding businesses that support and legitimize Israel’s illegal settlements
and apartheid against Palestinians.

The report meticulously documents the various ways western companies “play
a critical role in the functioning, sustainability, and expansion of
illegal settlements.”

Among the companies mentioned is Caterpillar, a heavy machinery
manufacturer whose armored bulldozers are used to demolish Palestinian
homes and construct Jewish settlements. The company is notoriously linked
to the death of young US peace activist Rachel Corrie
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/rachel-corrie-justice-palestinians-only-way-forward>
in 2003. Another mentioned is Elbit Systems, Israel's largest arms
manufacturer, which produces bullets, drones, combat vehicles, electronic
warfare systems, and missiles for use during the ongoing genocide.

Implicated alongside these are a number of unexpected consumer-facing
companies, including major tourism and leisure providers.

*Impact on the Palestinian population *

The findings expose how a major component of the modern western travel
industry is intimately implicated in sustaining and furthering the Israeli
occupation project, actively contributing to, profiting from, and complicit
in crimes against humanity perpetrated against the Palestinian people. As
ELSC's Daan de Grefte informs *The Cradle*:

“Settlements are illegal under international law, cause systematic human
rights violations, constitute a war crime and are harmful to any prospect
of justice and peace in Israel/Palestine. These settlements also form an
integral part of a system of racial domination that amounts to apartheid.
Several major online tourism companies offer services in the Occupied
Territories, which contravene these companies’ own human rights
commitments, while also legitimizing Israel’s clearly unlawful policy of
colonizing the West Bank. By operating in the settlements, they exacerbate
human rights harms to the local Palestinian population.”

Take Airbnb, for instance, the controversial “digital tourism company” that
has sought to disrupt and replace the traditional hotel industry. It offers
short and long-term rentals of private homes worldwide. Today, its website
lists “a large number of Israeli settlements.” These properties are based
in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Syria’s Golan Heights.

“In most cases,” DBIO observes, “the descriptions of the properties name
the settlement location, but the properties are listed as being located in
‘Israel’ and do not inform potential visitors that the accommodation is
located” in the Occupied Territories. In November 2018, Airbnb announced
<https://news.airbnb.com/listings-in-disputed-regions/> it would remove
around 200 listings in settlements, “at the core of the dispute between
Israelis and Palestinians.”

The decision was reversed
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/09/world/middleeast/airbnb-israel-west-bank.html>
just six months later due to multiple lawsuits in the US and Israel. In
2020, when the company was going public, it neglected to mention
<https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1559720/000119312520294801/d81668ds1.htm#toc81668_2>
its commercial interest in stolen land in filings to the US Securities and
Exchange Commission.

In a report two years earlier, Human Rights Watch noted how many Airbnb
listings “are constructed on land that is acknowledged by the Israeli
authorities to be privately owned by Palestinians who are not permitted to
access it.” The report adds:

“[Airbnb] helps make West Bank settlements more profitable and therefore
sustainable, thus facilitating Israel’s unlawful transfer of its citizens
to the settlements."

*Destination: Occupation*

Airbnb is included in a UN database
<https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/1475002?ln=en> of companies “involved
in the provision of services and utilities supporting the maintenance and
existence of settlements.” So, too, is Booking Holdings, another US tourism
giant, which claims to be the world’s leading provider of online travel and
related services. DBIO’s report notes that the company’s Booking.com
holiday rental subsidiary advertises hotels, guesthouses, and short-stay
apartments in settlements throughout the Occupied Territories.

While some listings note the properties are located in “Palestinian
Territory, Israeli settlements,” others are simply labeled “Jerusalem,”
etc. According to a May 2022 Booking.com “Human Rights Statement,”
customers are to be provided with transparent information on listings in
Occupied Territories, but this hasn’t happened.

Instead, listings primarily feature disclaimers, inviting customers to
review their government’s travel advisories before booking, as the area
“may be considered conflict-affected.”

Spanish travel company eDreams and US-based Expedia Group, which operates
portals like Hotels.com and Trivago, are also involved in advertising
properties in illegal Jewish settlements without informing customers of
their unlawful status. Customers are not informed about the settlements’
illegal status under international law. The company instead categorizes
these listings as being “in line with applicable law” while claiming to
manually remove “illicit” properties if they are identified by its staff,
or flagged by website visitors.

Tripadvisor and its Viator subsidiary go further by *promoting* tours and
activities in these settlements, including tours of wineries
<https://apnews.com/general-news-a8bfb603733f4cb3890bbb4fcecd06c1> built on
illegally appropriated Palestinian land, including one situated at Tel
Shiloh <https://apnews.com/general-news-a8bfb603733f4cb3890bbb4fcecd06c1>,
built on stolen Palestinian land and managed by a local settler council

Germany’s TUI Group, one of the world’s largest tourism companies, offers
guided tours of these settlements, labeling
<https://www.tui.nl/christelijke-reis-8-daagse-vliegreis-israel-519723736/>
them as part of “Israel and Jordan” or “Highlights of Israel.” These tours
often involve visiting sites built on stolen land, which has displaced
indigenous Palestinian Bedouin communities, such as the Qumran National Park
<https://www.glanlaw.org/_files/ugd/14ee1a_1fcfeb182c0d48408a8d18d29e458b67.pdf>
— communities who are increasingly forcibly displaced from their ancestral
lands, and suffer crippling restrictions on access to water, electricity,
and more today.

These tours are labeled
<https://www.tui.nl/christelijke-reis-8-daagse-vliegreis-israel-519723736/>
“Israel and Jordan” and “Highlights of Israel.” Another is titled “Back to
the Beginning—Israel,” which comprises
<https://tours.tui.be/fr/terug-naar-het-begin_ISRTUN00/> visits to Occupied
Bethlehem, the occupied Golan Heights, and sights in occupied East
Jerusalem.

DBIO charges that TUI Group’s activities are of particular concern “as they
are supporting the existence of illegal settlements and contribute to their
normalization.” ELSC’s Daan de Grefte tells *The Cradle* that online travel
agencies, by offering properties on colonized land, afford a cover of
normalcy to settlements and encourage unaware tourists to visit the
settlements and spend their money there.”

“Palestinians are not allowed to enter the settlements, meaning that the
accommodations listed on these websites are only open to foreigners and
Israelis. The companies therefore operate in a highly discriminatory
environment and enable the functioning of the illicit settlement economies.
By being active in these illicit economies created on stolen Palestinian
land, these OTAs run the risk of profiting from the war crimes that
established the settlements. It’s high time that the climate of impunity
surrounding these activities is challenged, especially now that Israel
is taking
unprecedented amounts of Palestinian land
<https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20240326-israel-s-largest-land-seizure-since-oslo-accords-deals-fresh-blow-to-palestinian-statehood>
and repression of the civilian population is rising to new extremes
<https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/01/11/israel/palestine-unprecedented-killings-repression>
.”

*Economic consequences for Israel *

As *The Cradle *has documented
<https://thecradle.co/articles/blowback-the-gaza-wars-massive-toll-on-israels-economy>
earlier, damage to the occupation state’s economy inflicted by the
Palestinian resistance's Al-Aqsa Flood operation was immense. It has only
been further wrecked since, with dire labor shortages
<https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-hamas-india-labor-shortage-migrant-workers-rcna135603>
in key industries, huge military expenditure straining already failing
finances, and a collapse in foreign investor confidence.

In February, Moody’s downgraded
<https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-moodys-smotrich-netanyahu-economy-4272d00b1626a4a8390a84def7196d99>
Israel’s credit rating, warning that the country’s economic outlook was
“negative”, and likely to worsen further if the war is protracted, which
seems almost certain.

In the past six months, Israel’s tourism industry has been especially
ravaged. Not long after Moody’s bleak appraisal, Yossi Fattal, director
general of the Chamber of Inbound Tourism Organizers, a trade body
representing travel agents, hoteliers, and other businesses in the
sector, bemoaned
how
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240222-israel-has-become-isolated-like-north-korea-because-of-the-gaza-war-chamber-of-tourism-says/>
the occupation state “has become one of the most isolated countries in the
world, like North Korea.”

Prior to 7 October, 250 airline companies flew to and from Tel Aviv – that
number is now just 45. As Fattal reported:

“Eighty percent of flights today are operated by aircraft from Israel
belonging to the [Israeli] El Al company… [This is] an unfortunate victory
for Hamas over Israel. The war is harming Israel’s strategic image. Israel
should have created a situation in which it found a way to facilitate and
encourage tourists to come here despite the war…The insurance premiums
required to travel to Israel are enormous.”

It is not merely “insurance premiums” deterring visitors, of course. On top
of security concerns, the Gaza genocide has dealt a fatal, likely
permanent, blow to Israel’s international public relations.

The brutal, murderous reality of Israeli occupation and settlement
viscerally writ large on TV, computer, and smartphone screens the world
over daily, Tel Aviv’s actions are producing global revulsion and boycott
like never before.

Many high-profile western firms and brands that initially expressed
solidarity with Israel have reported sizable dents
<https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68209085> in their incomes due to
consumer backlash. Such admissions amply demonstrate the urgency felt by
populations everywhere to hold any and all companies that support Israel’s
erasure of the Palestinian people since 1948 to account.

It’s a criminal constellation spanning every conceivable industry and
sector, with many offenders hiding their complicity and support in plain
sight. But as global grassroots — and increasingly, government and
institution-sanctioned — boycott and divestment efforts expand, there may
never be a return to “normal” for Israel or its western backers at any
level.



*This article is the first in a series on western corporations that invest
in and enrich illegal Israeli settlements, in violation of international
law. Future articles will be linked here, upon publication.*
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