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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element" dir="ltr"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/02/21/un-list-of-firms-aiding-israels-settlements-was-dead-on-arrival/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/02/21/un-list-of-firms-aiding-israels-settlements-was-dead-on-arrival/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">UN List of Firms Aiding Israel’s
Settlements was Dead on Arrival</h1>
<span class="post_author_intro">by</span> <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/jonathan-cook/"
rel="nofollow">Jonathan Cook</a> - February 21, 2020</span></div>
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<p><em>Nazareth.</em></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Aside from major Israeli banks, transport services,
cafes, supermarkets, and energy, building and telecoms
firms, prominent international businesses include
Airbnb, <a href="http://booking.com/">booking.com</a>,
Motorola, Trip Advisor, JCB, Expedia and General Mills.</p>
<p>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”.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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”.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The actions of several European states continue to
speak much louder than any words.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>So far Austria, Hungary, Australia and Brazil appear to
be following suit.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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”.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Then, the UN’s list of shame can join decades’ worth of
condemnatory resolutions that have been quietly
gathering dust.</p>
<p><em>A version of this article first appeared in the
National, Abu Dhabi.</em></p>
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