Sheffield Palestine Solidarity Campaign welcomes that the UN has at last published  a list of companies colluding in Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank. There are currently around 600,000 illegal settlers, part of a systematic policy to remove the Palestinian people from the land and expand Israel. Their number has been growing over the last 50 years. Some are economic settlers looking for cheap, state subsidised accommodation, others believe that they have a God given right to Palestinian land. The settlements exist because Israel is the dominant regional military power and is backed by the world’s only super power, the United States.

Stealing another people’s land is a throwback to colonial times. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, Britain intervened militarily, and when Russia annexed parts of Ukraine, Britain supported sanctions. By contrast, illegal Israeli settlements have been accompanied by mild rebuke but no sanctions. Consequently Israel has continued to expand with impunity and has been rewarded with aid and lucrative trade deals.

Now, the United Nations Human Rights Commission has produced a report that lists 112 companies that are active in these illegal settlements.The companies that profit from building and sustaining settlements, must be banned from trading in the UK.
The UN’s list of complicit companies is far from complete but it is a start. It is time for everyone committed todemocratic values to rally behind Palestinian civil society’s call for boycotting all trade with Israel until it abides byinternational law and ends the oppression and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

PSC has issued a statement here.

War on Want has issued a statement here.

Lawyers for Palestinian Human rights has issued a statement here.