Large Companies Reap Profits from Gaza’s Destruction
documents UN Special Rapporteur
The UN Special Rapporteur has documented how the human and material destruction of the Palestinian territories has become an important source of business for companies that sell arms, technology, energy, transport and services. All of these companies are dodging their legal responsibility as accomplices to genocide. Photo: Unicef
HAVANA TIMES – What’s happening in Gaza is a genocide based around a system of exploitive and profitable occupation, stated United Nations Special Rapporteur Teresa Albanese in a detailed report on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories.
“Corporate actors are profoundly tied in with the system of occupation, apartheid, and genocide in the occupied Palestinian territories,” Albanese reported in a document presented before the UN Human Rights Council in the Swiss city of Geneva.
The report documents how for decades Israel’s repression of the Palestinian population in the Gaza strip and the West Bank has been orchestrated by corporations fully aware, but indifferent to the human rights violations and international crimes being committed.
The expert noted that the Tel Aviv stock exchange rose 213 % in the last 21 months, accumulating US $225.7 billion dollars in stock market gains, of which 67.8 billion dollars corresponds to the last month alone.
These stock performances “are achieved while the Israeli genocide pulverizes Palestinian lives and landscapes. For some, genocide is profitable,” Albanese affirmed.
Israeli attacks and bombardments kill dozens of Palestinians daily in Gaza, including in the hospitals and refugee camps. The UN has documented at least 613 Palestinian deaths in recent weeks, while attempting to access the food distribution points managed jointly by a Israeli-U.S. proxy foundation.
The current assault, which has devastated the Gaza Strip, began on October 7, 2023, when the militant group Hamas attacked in the south of Israel, killing 1,200 Israelis, mainly civilians. Israel’s military response has now cost the lives of at least 57,000 Palestinians and injured another 134,000.
Simultaneously, Israel has accentuated its control and repression over the West Bank. In both of the occupied Palestinian territories, they’ve conducted a forced displacement of the population, a displacement that has been repeated several times for thousands of families in Gaza over the past year and a half.
The UN Special Rapporteur documents how the corporate infrastructure that is benefitting from the Israeli occupation economy has become “a genocide economy.”
“The corporate actors are deeply tied to the system of occupation, apartheid and genocide in the occupied Palestinian territories,” she affirmed.
The report identified 48 large corporations – including arms manufacturers, technology companies, financial institutions, and construction and energy companies – who have failed to fulfill their most basic legal responsibility to use their influence to put an end to the violation of Palestinians’ rights or end their relations and disengage.
Instead, the expert continued, they’ve treated Israel’s illegal activities in the occupied Palestinian territory as an ordinary economic activity, even as atrocities have intensified since October 7, 2023.
“These actors have consolidated and expanded the Israeli colonial logic of displacement and replacement, and this is not accidental,” she stated, adding that an entire economy has been built to dominate, dispossess and expel the Palestinians from their land.
Among others, the report names the US Lockheed Martin corporation, who produces the F-35 airplanes used to carry bombs, and the companies providing the drones and targeting technology that has allowed the release of 85,000 tons of bombs over Gaza – six times the weight of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima.
She also stressed the role of the technology companies that have provided mass data collection and surveillance of Palestinians; the energy companies who have fed the Israeli blockade; and the construction companies that continue to supply the equipment that has reduced Gaza to rubble.
Other names appearing in her report include: Elbit Systems, Aerospace Industries y NSO of Israel, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, Chevron y Caterpillar (U.S.), Hyundai (S Korea), Glencore (Switzerland), Maersk (Denmark), Tnuva (China) y Volvo (Sweden).
Albanese also noted that apparently neutral actors such as tourist sites, supermarkets, and universities “are normalizing apartheid and the systematic elimination of Palestinian life.”
In this sense, she asserted these companies cannot claim neutrality: “they’re either part of the machinery of displacement or of its dismantling”.
The Rapporteur urged countries to impose a total arms embargo, suspend trade and investment agreements, and demand that companies be held accountable for violations of international law.
“Palestine is a mirror, reflecting the moral and political failures of the world. Putting an end to this genocide requires not only outrage, but also rupture, reflection, and the courage to dismantle what makes it possible,” the expert concluded.
Click here for the written report presented before the UN Human Rights Council.
First published in Spanish by IPS and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.