Ashrawi denounces U.S. and Israeli efforts to block list of companies operating in illegal settlements

PNN/ Ramallah/

PLO Executive Committee Member Dr. Hanan Ashrawi on Sunday denounced U.S. and Israeli campaign to silence the United Nations Human Rights Council as it “exposes the complicity of Israeli and international businesses in Israel’s military occupation and the colonization of Palestinian land is morally repugnant.”

“This is a clear indication of Israel’s persistent impunity and sense of entitlement and privilege,” Ashrawi said in an official statement.

“Such efforts constitute a flagrant obstruction of justice and willful defiance of the UNHRC resolution which was passed unanimously last year that called for the production of “a database of all business enterprises, both Israeli and international, involved in the activities in the settlements,” that would be updated once a year,” Ashrawi added.

Ashrawi aslo said that Israel’s illegal settlement policies and practices are unequivocally a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and in direct contravention of international law and conventions, including UNSC resolutions 446 (1979), 452 (1979), 465 (1980), and 2334 (2016).

“Any company that chooses to do business in the illegal settlements becomes complicit in the crime and therefore liable to judicial accountability. In addition, the U.S. and Israel cannot violate the rights of individuals, companies and firms to be informed and ethical consumers or investors – especially when a grave injustice of this proportion is at stake.

“Suppressing the truth perpetuates Israeli impunity and gives Israel clear license to pursue its persistent policies of land theft and creeping annexation of Palestine.

“The recent campaign to whitewash the military occupation and to give Israel a free pass at the UN, as a well as conflating any criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, enables the occupation and destroys the chances of peace,” Ashrawi concluded.