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Saturday, February 2, 2019
TripAdvisor among firms profiting from Israeli war crimes
Part of Israel’s Gush Etzion settlement bloc in the southern occupied
West Bank, one of hundreds of colonies built on Palestinian land in
violation of international law.
APA images
Rights and Accountability 31 January 2019
Online booking companies Airbnb, TripAdvisor, Booking.com and
Expedia are fueling and profiting from war crimes by listing hundreds
of destinations in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank,
including East Jerusalem.
TripAdvisor is one of the world’s biggest and most influential travel booking and recommendation websites.
“The Israeli government uses the growing tourism industry in the
settlements as a way of legitimizing their existence and expansion, and
online booking companies are playing along with this agenda,” said Seema
Joshi of Amnesty International, which has published a new report on the companies’ activities.
Listings include accommodations and attractions, and often fail to indicate that they are located in settlements.
“Amnesty International is calling for these four companies to stop doing
business in or with the settlements,” Mark Dummett, an Amnesty
researcher, stated. “They should suspend, withdraw these listings
immediately.”
“We’re also calling on governments around the world to regulate the
operations of these companies, to pass laws that prevent them from
advertising or providing listings in Israeli settlements,” Dummett
added.
Take a trip with us…to the lands of the illegal Israeli settlements. Promise “guns, check points and walls” aren’t too far away! RT to tell @TripAdvisor to pull out of illegal Israeli settlements now.
All of Israel’s settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East
Jerusalem, and Syria’s Golan Heights are illegal under international law
and are considered a war crime.
In building settlements, Israel perpetuates human rights violations
against the occupied Palestinian population, including home demolitions,
forced displacement and theft of land.
The increased presence of illegal settlers means a greater “security”
presence by the Israeli army, which translates into even more violence
by Israeli occupation forces and by the settlers themselves against Palestinians.
Palestinians who live under Israeli military occupation and severe
movement restrictions in the occupied West Bank – or as refugees in
exile – cannot rent properties in nearby Israeli settlements.
Israel bars exiled Palestinians from returning to their homeland because they are not Jewish.
Expanding settlements
One listing on Airbnb, TripAdvisor and Booking.com is in Kfar Adumim, an Israeli settlement east of Jerusalem near the Palestinian village of Khan al-Ahmar.
Israel’s high court has given the government a green light to demolish Khan al-Ahmar and forcibly displace its residents.
This land east of Jerusalem, in the so-called E1 zone,
is where Israel plans to expand its mega-settlement of Maaleh Adumim,
completing the isolation of the northern and southern parts of the West
Bank from each other and encircling Jerusalem with settlements.
Earlier this month, Israel’s economy minister Eli Cohen toured Khan
al-Ahmar escorted by representatives from far-right pro-settlement
Israeli organization Regavim.
Cohen called on Israel to demolish the village before upcoming Israeli elections in April.
“Khan al-Ahmar outpost should be evacuated before the elections. But
even more important, we must deny the Palestinian Authority territorial
contiguity, by coming and annexing, and applying [Israeli] sovereignty
over Area C,” Cohen stated.
Area C is a term for 60 percent of the occupied West Bank still fully
controlled by Israel under the Oslo accords signed in the 1990s.
The booking sites also drive business to Israeli “archaeological” attractions in Silwan, an occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood whose Palestinian residents Israel is violently displacing for the benefit of Jewish settlers.
Amnesty noted that Silwan and other Palestinian villages located near settlements are close to “lucrative” tourist attractions.
An example is the so-called City of David,
which not only reaps profits for the settlers, but is part of Israel’s
ongoing effort to erase Jerusalem’s Palestinian, Arab, Christian and
Muslim characters and remake and rewrite the city’s past and present as
predominantly or exclusively Jewish.
Calls to abide by international law
In a December letter, Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq and three
other organizations demanded that Booking.com stop listing properties in
the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the occupied
Golan Heights, and cease referring to these areas as parts of Israel.
Airbnb and Booking.com facilitate the “continuation and expansion of
illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank,” Al-Haq stated.
“By allowing tourists to make reservations in illegal settlements in the
[occupied Palestinian territories] Booking.com is supporting and
helping to finance illegal activity,” the group added.
Airbnb leaves West Bank
In November, Airbnb announced that
it will delist units in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank
following a years-long campaign by Palestinian and international human
rights activists.
But Airbnb did not extend that commitment to occupied East Jerusalem, where it has more than 100 settlement listings.
“Amnesty International is calling on Airbnb to implement its
announcement and remove all its listings in settlements in occupied
territory, including East Jerusalem,” the human rights group stated.
Despite months of intense pressure from Israel, lobby groups and US lawmakers to rescind its decision, Airbnb recently reiterated its November announcement and said it would be pulling the rental properties.
In retaliation, Florida’s governor has directed that his state should cease doing business with Airbnb.
The Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah appeared on Al Jazeera English on Wednesday night to discuss Amnesty’s report.
“Promoting and aiding and profiting from the settlements is no different
from walking into a store, robbing it at gunpoint, and then going out
into the street and selling the stolen goods for your own profit,”
Abunimah said.
Abunimah added that states – such as the Netherlands, where Booking.com is based – must hold these companies accountable.
“The Dutch government claims to oppose the occupation but it’s doing
nothing to enforce international law or require its companies like
Booking.com to respect it.”
Expelling human rights organizations
Israel is already planning to retaliate against Amnesty International over its report.
Israeli public security minister Gilad Erdan ordered officials to “examine the possibility of preventing the entry and stay of Amnesty International in Israel.”
Erdan is also seeking to end the organization’s tax exemption through Israel’s finance ministry.
Israeli tourism minister Yariv Levin also slammed Amnesty’s report.
“No force in the world will change the simple historical truth – the
Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people. We will fight this
despicable anti-Semitic decision. No one can boycott Israel or parts of
it,” he said, according to The Jerusalem Post.
Any further crackdown on Amnesty would be part of a broader Israeli pattern of restricting the work of human rights defenders.
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he will not renew the mandate of a human rights monitoring group in Hebron.
The mandate of the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) was
set to be renewed on 31 January, as it is every six months.
TIPH was established in 1994, following the massacre of 29 Palestinian men and boys in Hebron’s Ibrahimi mosque by US-born settler Baruch Goldstein.
Ali Abunimah contributed research.
