Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, has called on countries to cut off all trade and financial ties with Israel, including a full arms embargo, and withdraw international support for what she termed an “economy of genocide.”
Albanese made the comments in a speech to the Human Rights Council in Geneva as she presented her latest report, which named dozens of companies she said were involved in supporting Israeli repression and violence towards Palestinians.
“The situation in the occupied Palestinian territory is apocalyptic. Israel is responsible for one of the cruellest genocides in modern history.”
Francesca Albanese
The report, titled “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide,” detailed what it described as “the corporate machinery sustaining Israel’s settler-colonial project of displacement and replacement of the Palestinians in the occupied territory.”
The report singled out companies, including arms manufacturers, tech giants, heavy machinery companies and financial institutions, for their “complicity” in Israel’s repression of Palestinians, from sustaining Israeli expansion on occupied land to enabling the surveillance and killing of Palestinians.
The report said that while political leaders had been shirking their responsibilities to pressure Israel to halt its bloodshed in Gaza, “far too many corporate entities have profited from Israel’s economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now, genocide.”
It called on the international community to “hold the private sector accountable” for companies’ complicity in Israel’s abuses, by ensuring they faced legal consequences for their involvement in violations of international law.
“There is a prima facie responsibility on every state and corporate entity to completely abstain from or end their relationships with this economy of occupation.”
Francesca Albanese
Albanese added that if the corporate sector had observed proper due diligence, it “would have disengaged completely and totally from its entanglement with the Israeli economy.”
Testing Grounds For Cutting-Edge Military Technology
The UN report described the military-industrial complex as “the economic backbone” of the Israeli state.
It said that Israel’s prolonged occupation and repeated military campaigns had provided testing grounds for cutting-edge military technology, from air defence platforms and drones, to AI-enabled targeting tools and the F-35 fighter jet programme.
Albanese disclosed that arms companies had turned near-record profits by providing Israel with cutting-edge weaponry to unleash 85,000 tonnes of explosives – six times the power of Hiroshima – to devastate Gaza.
The report also highlighted the role of the tech sector, saying giants like Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon played an integral part in enabling Israel’s mass-surveillance systems.
IBM has also been responsible for training military and intelligence personnel, as well as managing a central database storing the biometric data of Palestinians, while US company Palantir Technologies has expanded its support to the Israeli military since the start of the war on Gaza, the report said.
It also pointed to heavy machinery companies like the US’s Caterpillar Inc, South Korea’s Hyundai and Sweden’s Volvo Group for providing equipment linked to the destruction of Palestinian property.
The report also named rental platforms Booking and Airbnb, saying they aided illegal settlements by listing properties and hotel rooms in Israeli-occupied territory.
“What I expose is not a list, it is a system, and that is to be addressed. Weapons and data systems brutalise and surveil Palestinians.
“Colonies spread – financed by banks and insurers, powered by fossil fuels, and normalised by tourism platforms, supermarket chains and academic institutions.”
Francesca Albanese
According to the UN, nearly 57,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since the war, now in its 22nd month began, hundreds of thousands have been displaced multiple times, cities and towns have been razed, hospitals and schools targeted, and 85 percent of the besieged and bombarded enclave is now under Israeli military control.
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