 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch. The United Nations Office of the Council of Human Rights has released a list of 112 companies which operate on illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian lands. This includes 18 international companies and 94 Israeli companies. And these settlements are considered to be a war crime under international law. So to talk about this list and also understand what these settlements are and also understand what operating on these settlements means, we have with us Apoorwa, the South Asia Coordinator of the Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions Movement. So Apoorwa, can you first explain to our viewers what exactly these illegal settlements are? The 1967 boundaries between Israel and the Palestinian territories, the occupied Palestinian territories, have been encroached upon consistently by the State of Israel through these settlements. What that means is that starting from 1967, the Israeli State has supported building outposts, building entire residential colonies, universities, industries within the occupied territories, occupied Palestinian territories, which, as you said, is a war crime, is a war crime under the 4 Geneva Convention, because this implies transfer of population and changes to the property of an occupied territory. Now, Israel has always been in denial of this when asked about it, but there has been research even from an independent investigation that was sort of sent by the Human Rights Council in 2012. And apart from many other studies that have shown that the Israeli State, since 1967, and starting from that, has actually supported the construction of these settlements, given them tax breaks to people who live over there, made it cheaper to actually live over there, because this is part of the plan of the State of Israel to annex the occupied territories. And these settlements have grown exponentially over these years, and it's a key contention because this is also entailed in the Trump plan, where it's asked that these settlements be accepted, but what it is essentially saying is to accept a war crime, and to go forward with the fragmentation and turning of the occupied Palestinian territories, occupied West Bank, into Bantu stance. That's what the settlements do, which is that they fragment the continuity of the land of the occupied West Bank, and especially around the Jerusalem area. Of course, these come at the expense of moving Palestinians from their homes and displacing them. Yes, so it entails dispossession and displacement of Palestinians to begin with. You would have heard about a number of home demolitions. One happened just last year. One of the biggest ones in recent years, where about a thousand people were displaced, their entire residential complex was demolished. That's also in the greater Jerusalem area, and it's part of how the settlements grow, which is that you first say that this is illegal, then the Israeli State will come and demolish it. They'll first say that it's a military camp, and slowly or in other ways encroach upon Palestinian lands. But also aside from that, within the occupied West Bank, this also means that it has a huge amount of costs for Palestinians. Farming is nearly impossible in the occupied West Bank because of this, because a lot of these settlements are in rural areas, are in areas which are actually farms of Palestinians, and because that encroachment, they can't actually get to their land and farm their own lands. That's actually one of the biggest costs of it. The theft of water and land is actually key to the colonization project of Israel and is essential to the settlements project. It also means that Palestinians are not free to move even within the occupied territories, because the settlements, as I said that they break up the contiguity of the land of occupied West Bank. So there are all settlements are connected by roads which are only used by settlers and by Israel. So even for the Palestinian to go from one place to another, they have to take a longer route because they cannot cross that area of a settlement. So it restricts their freedom of movement has a lot of economic cost. It is a reason for displacement and dispossession. And it's also the key aspect here is one of the key things here is that it is what clearly prevents the self-determination of the Palestinian people because it actually says they cannot actually be a contiguous West Bank which sort of demolishes the idea of a future state of Palestine because you're breaking up the territory which is supposed to be a future state of independent state of Palestine according to the two nation idea. And now moving on to what the list is. So what exactly is this list which the UN has now released? Why are these companies on this list and what have they been accused of? Yeah, so this is a long project. It's a long series of things that have led to this moment. And if you could just give me a little bit time to explain how this came about, this understanding came about. In 2005, the International Court of Justice gave an advisory opinion saying that the wall which goes all along and is constantly expanding and it's part of the settlement project of Israel which snakes all over West Bank, the Palestinian occupatory of West Bank, that the wall itself and the settlements is illegal. This was the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice and that not only should Israel end this project and withdraw from it and compensate Palestinians for it, all organizations, businesses and third states like sort of nations which are not Israel and Palestine which support it are also sort of enabling it so they should stop doing that. And this was said by the ICJ advisory opinion. Moving on from that, there have been a number of steps taken by the Human Rights Council, one of which was the independent fact-finding team that I said it had sent. In 2016, there was a resolution passed. It's called the Resolution 3136 which then called for a database of these companies to be prepared. And it has a specific set of criteria. It says that businesses that support the settlement businesses and so businesses that enable a lot of the things that I said before against the Palestinians that displace them, that hinder their economic growth and productivity, that hinder their movement. These are the criteria under which what qualifies as settlement enterprise for the UN Human Rights Council is understood. So the businesses, all of them that have been listed in some of the other way violate Palestinian rights in under those categories that we spoke about before. So there's a whole list around it. And finally this list has been published now. It's taken three years for it to be published and human rights groups from all over the world have been asking for this list to be published since a long time and clearly there was pressure from Israel and United States for it to not be published. But it's a huge step forward for the Human Rights Council to have actually published this finally. And what will be the impact for these companies now? Have they been explicitly declared illegal or is it just a way of, you know, just a list which shows, okay, these companies are there and they're doing, operating on illegal land. So, you know, just a way of listing them. But what will be the impact? What will they face now? Well, they will face clearly a lot of, so what they're saying is that the activity of supporting the settlements is illegal and that they should end those activities. And it also says that, and this is a list that they have said that they will keep updating. So this is not, you know, like just only in the final list and that they have to prove how they have ended those sort of business engagements with the settlements. The implications that it has is that it really mounts up the pressure on these companies to go on engaging with settlement activities. And it also gives a chance, and in a sense it's one of the first ways in which any UN entity has taken a concrete step in the direction of the illegal activity of settlements. It has said that operations with these are illegal, it amounts to pressure on all these companies to end those ties. And it also gives a boost to the campaigns of boycotts and divestments against these companies because here you have a UN entity saying that this is illegal activity. It has business implications, but it also has implications within the larger framework of international law because this is illegal under international law. That's not something you can easily get away with. So this feeds into other future steps that the UN and such bodies might take in this direction. So in that sense, the concreteness of this is really what is the most remarkable aspect of having actually saying that these are the companies that have been working in illegal settlements and they should stop this activity and anyone supporting it is actually contributing to something which is a violation of international law. And the BDS has said in the statement that this list is still incomplete. So can you tell us what companies have been left out and why do you think they've been left out? So it's interesting how also how is it understood what companies do this because it takes a huge amount of research to find this out. And in that sense this is the fact that this is out also reflects the diversity of movements that have worked on this issue. So there is an Israeli research center called Who Profits that are American, there's an American organization called Investigate. These are some of the examples of organizations that have actually done the detailed work of which are the companies that are working in settlements. They have evidence to show all of it. From that understanding, from the understanding of various human rights groups working on this issue, there are a lot more companies that have even more, that have really grave that have done a lot of more grave violations on this. I mean an example would be Teva which is a huge pharmaceutical company, Israeli pharmaceutical company working from the settlements, profiting from the settlements. HP, the HP enterprises suspend off DXE technology works from settlements. Israeli arms industry is completely out of it which is like a huge obvious gap. I mean so what you can see actually is that some of the really powerful companies have not made it to this list which are known to have been working in the settlements. So clearly the pressure, so actually one of the things we are trying to say is that the UNHRC should not give in to this pressure and actually continue to update this list with more companies that have been working in the settlements. There is Netafim for example which, Netafim is a very good case because Netafim is also a company which is enlisted for subsidy in a lot of Indian states. So and Netafim is a company which is key to stealing Palestinian lands and waters in the occupied West Bank for the services of settlement. So this is actually one of the things like I said which hinders the agricultural productivity of Palestinian farmers and here you have this company enlisted in what is essentially a legitimation of this company. You know if you enter the subsidy list of a state government in a region as huge as you know Karnataka or Tamil Nadu, you have a lot of profits coming in from there and you also get legitimation from state governments and the key thing is that having this list published now means that we can go and ask these governments to respond to this and to not actually work with Netafim. I mean Netafim is not on the list but it works in settlements. So this actually when you say what is the concrete implication, this is for example a concrete implication and Netafim is one such company that clearly contributes to that colonization, contributes to settlements and should pay the cost for that activity. I know what has been the response from Israeli authorities and also Palestinian political parties and organizations? Israel and the US stepped out of the Human Rights Council a few years ago so and they have said that I mean they have gone on the other end and said the president has said that they are proud of these companies and he's even mentioned companies which are not even on the list so it's quite curious but they have as usual gone on the opposite and on the offensive but I guess the point is that their impunity is exactly what is being called out by something like this list so that's the key thing we should take away from this. The Palestinian Authority has also welcomed this as have all sort of human rights organizations that have worked towards it including the BDS movement because this enlivens the campaigns that have been going on for all these years calling for these companies to be held accountable for profiteering from war crimes literally I mean if I had to put it in a sentence this is not just enabling war crimes you're profiteering from war crimes and that's something that must be held that they must be held accountable to and to take that forward and to strengthen those campaigns is how we look forward to going on on this. And finally what is now BDS's future plan and what campaigns is it planning after this list has come out? So the BDS movement has called for all states, institutions, churches, universities to end their ties with these companies that are there on this list and in a larger sense it sort of gives energy to our campaigns that call for accountability from Israeli state and corporations and institutions that profit from the colonialism apartheid and occupation against the Palestinian people so it's energizing for us as a movement as well. Thank you Apuva for joining us today and that's all the time we have thank you for watching People's Dispatch.