US Vice-President Mike Pence became the first top US official to threaten the San-Francisco based global rental platform Airbnb for de-listing Israeli rentals on the Palestinian Occupied West Bank last month. Speaking to the annual conference of the Israeli-American Council on Friday, Pence said that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement targeting the Israeli occupation had “no place in the free enterprise of America”. Pence incorrectly said that Airbnb had banned listings in both East Jerusalem and on the West Bank, when the company's announcement on 19 November only said it would no longer list Israeli settlements in the Occupied West Bank because it is a “disputed region.” Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights in the 1967 War. Airbnb's statement entitled “Listings in Disputed Regions” outlined the company's evaluation of “conflicting views” on whether to continue doing business in Palestinian territory occupied by Israel. “Many in the global community have stated that companies should not do business here because they believe companies should not profit on lands where people have been displaced,” the statement said. Airbnb decided to remove approximately 200 listings in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, but will continue to do business in Occupied East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and inside Israel where over 20,000 Airbnb hosts are listed. Although the company's decision has done little to harm Israel's travel industry, it has provoked Israel's outrage because of its possible political ramifications. The UN considers the West Bank to be occupied Palestinian territory and a main part of a future Palestinian state. The same thing was true of the US until the election of the Trump administration in 2016. It is for this reason that Israeli settlements on the West Bank, where Airbnb has suspended business, are illegal and violate international law. Airbnb's carefully worded statement also said that the company had developed a global framework for evaluating listings in occupied territories and had removed listings in Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014. Both the international NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the BDS Movement have long campaigned for the removal of illegal Israeli rentals in the Palestinian Occupied Territories from both Airbnb and the Netherlands-based online travel rental Website Booking.com. The campaigns have argued that both companies have helped sustain the illegal Israeli settlement economy by listing rentals on occupied land. The latter have also contributed to Israel's discriminatory policy towards the Palestinians, who are banned from entering the Israeli settlements or accessing rentals on Airbnb's platform in these areas. Palestinian ID-holders are not allowed to enter the settlements except as labourers bearing special permits. On 20 November, HRW together with the Israeli NGO Kerem Navot released a 65-page report entitled “Bed and Breakfast on Stolen Land: Tourist Rental Listings in West Bank Settlements” that traces the status of the land on which the rental properties are built. “Israelis and foreigners may rent properties in the settlements, but Palestinian ID-holders are effectively barred – the only example in the world that the organisations found in which Airbnb hosts have no choice but to discriminate against guests based on national or ethnic origin,” the report said. “By delisting rentals in illegal settlements off limits to Palestinians, Airbnb has taken a stand against discrimination, displacement and land theft,” Arvind Ganesan, business and human rights director at Human Rights Watch, said. “The continued business activities of Booking.com and other companies in the settlements contribute to entrenching a two-tiered discriminatory regime in the West Bank.” Airbnb's anti-discrimination policy forbids discrimination based on national origin in the United States and the European Union, but it permits it elsewhere where domestic law allows it, HRW said. In the West Bank, Airbnb “has been acquiescing to a policy under which a Palestinian landowner cannot even pay to stay in a home built on their own land, let alone use their land for development,” it said. The decision by Airbnb comes almost a year after the UN Security Council overwhelmingly adopted Resolution 2334 in December 2016 condemning Israeli settlements built on Palestinian land occupied in 1967. The resolution states that Israel's settlement activity constitutes a “flagrant violation” of international law and has “no legal validity.” It demands that Israel stop such activity and fulfill its obligations as an occupying power under the Fourth Geneva Convention. The resolution has been viewed as significant because it effectively legitimises the work of the BDS Movement, which is not tolerated in Israel and is the subject of legal efforts in the US to ban any boycott of Israel. While welcoming Airbnb's decision, the BDS Movement said the company had contradicted its own statement by failing to delist properties in illegal Israeli settlements in Occupied East Jerusalem, including in the Old City. “All Israeli settlements in Occupied Palestinian – and Syrian – territory constitute war crimes under international law. East Jerusalem is no exception,” it said in a statement. In Israel, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan called on Israelis to boycott Airbnb. Erdan, who is tasked with combating the BDS Movement, said that Israel was “examining courses of action” against Airbnb, which he denounced as “anti-Semitic, discriminatory and racist.” “BDS and terror are two sides of the same coin. Both reject the right of the Jewish people to a national home. Both spread incitement aimed at demonising the Jewish state. And both justify violence against Israeli civilians as legitimate resistance,” he said. Erdan has turned to the governors of the US states of Florida, Illinois, California, New York and Missouri to see if Airbnb's decision violates anti-boycott laws in these states. California, where Airbnb is headquartered, has a less stringent law that requires companies to certify that they do not violate the state's civil rights laws in boycotting Israel or any other foreign country. The focus by Israel and US figures on attacking the BDS Movement has been interpreted as an attempt to divert attention away from Israel's serious violations of human rights and international law, observers say. “The BDS Movement has become an easy target, a bogeyman and a way to deflect attention from Israel's serious human rights violations,” Omar Shakir, HRW Israel and Palestine director, told Al-Ahram Weekly. “There is no way for Airbnb to have continued operating in the West Bank without seriously violation of international law,” he added. “It is easy for those trying to shift the conversation to target, demonise and scapegoat BDS rather than try to defend a policy which is not in keeping with the most basic standards of international law.”
