The food and soap manufacturing
multinational Unilever has announced that it will divest from an
Israeli factory in a Jewish settlement illegally built on land
confiscated from Palestinians.
Unilever, which makes household
staples such as Sunsilk shampoo, Surf washing powder and Vaseline, said
it would sell its 51% stake in the Beigel & Beigel factory in the
West Bank settlement of Ariel.
The UK and Dutch-owned
multinational has followed Harrods department store – which cleared its
shelves of Beigel & Beigel products, such as pretzels, in August –
and a campaign by Britain to crack down on Israeli settlement
businesses that are allegedly dodging EU import taxes.
Unilever’s
announcement also came ahead of a report on its investment in the
occupied territories by United Civilians for Peace, a Dutch human
rights group.
UCP said the decision of Unilever, which defied the
international boycott against South Africa during the apartheid era,
showed that the firm was “serious” about international law and social
responsibility.
But Unilever Israel, which bought half of Beigel & Beigel in 2001, said the move was strategic, not ethical.
“This decision has been taken with reluctance after a long period of analysis and review,” it said.
“Following
the divestment in recent years of a number of non-core businesses …
the decision has been reached to divest of its interests in the bakery
business and will therefore seek to find a buyer for Unilever’s share
in the Beigel & Beigel partnership,” the company said in a
statement.
Ariel is one of three large Israeli settlement blocs
that penetrate and separate northern and southern parts of the West
Bank. It is surrounded by a network of roads that Palestinians are
forbidden to use without special permission.
The settlement is
built on land that Israel conquered in the 1967 Six Day war. According
to UCP, the land for the Beigel & Beigel factory, in Ariel’s Barkan
industrial estate, was confiscated from the surrounding Palestinian
villages in 1981 by a Israeli military order.
“International law prohibits the confiscation of occupied land not for military purposes,” the UCP report says.
It
also claims that Unilever is in effect supporting Ariel because it pays
taxes to the Shomron regional council, which provides services such as
rubbish disposal to Barkan. In return, Unilever receives, via Beigel
& Beigel, some of the “generous” subsidies that Israel pays
companies to produce in settlements.
Companies that operate in settlements also benefit from employing cheap Palestinian labour, the report says.
At
Beigel & Beigel, 45% of the 140 workers are Palestinians from the
surrounding villages whose land was confiscated for the construction.
Most of them work on the assembly line operating machines and contrary
to Unilever’s own labour standards, they are not paid the Israeli
minimum wage, the report claims.
Many workers are paid to work
46.5 hours a week but they often work 50 hours with no compensation.
One worker, who must pass through a checkpoint gate to go home after
work, told UCP that he is often unable to return to his village.