UN List of Firms Aiding Israel’s Settlements Was Dead on Arrival
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, 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.
*
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A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.
Jonathan Cook
won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include
“Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to
Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine:
Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Jonathan Cook, Global Research, 2020
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