

Dead Sea (Photo: David Shankbone)

A new report by Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq accuses Israel of “encouraging and facilitating the exploitation of Palestinian natural resources and actively assisting their pillaging by private actors” in the Dead Sea region of the occupied West Bank.

By financially subsidizing the Mitzpe Shalem settlement and permitting the extraction of Dead Sea mud by Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories Ltd., Israel enables these “primary perpetrators of the war crime of pillage,” placing it “openly in violation of its obligations as an Occupying Power in the OPT,” the document says.

The report, which has already attracted attention from media including the Guardian, Inter Press Service, and Australia’s Fairfax Media conglomerate, follows a chain of victories for the Stolen Beauty campaign against Ahava, part of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, this year.

Over the summer, the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church USA, and the United Church of Canada all voted to boycott Israeli settlement products, with Ahava highlighted as a prime offender at each denomination’s conference.

In July, Abigail Disney , a Roy E. Disney heiress and partner in Shamrock Holdings, an 18.5% Ahava shareholder, denounced the company.

“I cannot in good conscience profit from what is technically the ‘plunder’ or ‘pillage’ of occupied natural resources and the company’s situating its factory in an Israeli settlement in the Occupied West Bank,” Disney said.

“Because of complicated legal and financial constraints I am unable to withdraw my investment at this time, but will donate the corpus of the investment as well as the profits accrued to me during the term of my involvement to organizations working to end this illegal exploitation.”

Earlier in the year, a distributor in Japan and retail chain in Norway bowed to public pressure and removed Ahava from their inventories.

Ahava also faced public protests from British scientists and filmmakers, as well as European academics, who signed statements opposing collaboration with it by the Natural History Museum in London, European governments and universities, and the European Union.

The Al-Haq report echoes a similar one released in May by Who Profits, which traced Ahava’s supply chain to the occupied shores of the Dead Sea – and its profits to illegal settlers.

For campaigners, both publications are worth reading. Al-Haq’s is particularly useful for its overview of international law as it pertains to occupation, settlement, and pillage. A sample offers a brief corporate profile of Ahava (with footnotes and much more at the link):