Days of Palestine, Jerusalem –Businesses should stop their activities in the illegal Israeli settlement built in the occupied Palestinian territories, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday.
In a detailed report, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said: “Businesses should stop operating in, financing, servicing, or trading with Israeli settlements in order to comply with their human rights responsibilities.
“Those activities contribute to and benefit from an inherently unlawful and abusive system that violates the rights of Palestinians.”
The 162-page report, “Occupation, Inc.: How Settlement Businesses Contribute to Israel’s Violations of Palestinian Rights,” documents how settlement businesses facilitate the growth and operations of settlements.
It also shows how these businesses depend on and contribute to the unlawful Israeli confiscation of Palestinian land and other resources. It also shows how they benefit from these violations.
HRW explained the Israeli discriminatory policies that provide privileges to the illegal settlements at the expense of the Palestinians, such as access to land and water, government subsidies, and permits for developing land.
“Settlement businesses unavoidably contribute to the Israeli policies that dispossess and harshly discriminate against Palestinians, while profiting from Israeli theft of Palestinian land and other resources,” said Arvind Ganesan, director of the business and human rights division.
“The only way for businesses to comply with their own human rights responsibilities is to stop working with and in the Israeli settlements.”
More than 700,000 illegal Israeli settlers live in 237 illegal Israeli settlements throughout the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including in East Jerusalem.
Successive Israeli governments have facilitated this process, but businesses also play a critical role in establishing and expanding settlements, and enabling them to function.
Under the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, companies should respect human rights and identify and mitigate any adverse human rights impact their operations may cause.
“But because of the nature of settlements, which are inherently illegal under the Geneva Conventions, companies cannot mitigate their contribution to the Israeli violations so long as they operate in settlements or engage in settlement-related commercial activity,” Human Rights Watch said.
Some of the businesses located in settlements or settlement industrial zones, often drawn by cheap Palestinian labour, low rents, or favorable tax rates.
“Settlement businesses facilitate the Israeli violations of international humanitarian law,” Human Rights Watch said. “The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying power from transferring its civilians into the territory it occupies.”
HRW also added: “The Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court, states that such a transfer, directly or indirectly, is a war crime.
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