Room for discussion: Israeli settlements and tourism platforms in the West Bank
The cabin is part of a collection of outposts that form the rural settlement of Kedar which was established by religious Israeli settlers in the 1980s in the occupied West Bank. The Airbnb profile does not mention that the cabins are located on Palestinian land, while the Booking.com profile describes the location as 'Palestinian Territory, Israeli settlement'.
The desert guest house is accessible via
a modern bypass
built predominantly on expropriated Palestinian land and which was mostly empty when The Irish Times drove along it, accompanied by Dror Etkes, an Israeli expert on settlements and land policy in the West Bank and head of the NGO Kerem Navot.
The 1,600-strong settler community in Kedar has repeatedly protested against plans to open the highway to Palestinian drivers who they claim could pose a security risk. Instead, Palestinian drivers are required to travel through the town of Elazariya which can take four times longer. The owner of the cabin said by email that travelling to the remote holiday site in a Palestinian car would cause issues with 'authorities'.
READ MORE
Armed with maps, cameras and video drones, Etkes has spent the past two decades driving across the West Bank monitoring settlement activity -'what we are seeing in the West Bank since [the Hamas attacks on Israel in] October 7th, 2023, we haven't seen ever before,' he says. Dotted on several hill tops in the area are white caravans and construction sites. Israel
announced
plans in 2024 for 3,300 new homes in Kedar, as well as the larger nearby settlement of Ma'ale Adumim, while Palestinians in the wider area have faced further
road closures
, home demolitions and mass
displacement
.
Dror Etkes, an Israeli expert on settlements and land policy in the West Bank and head of the NGO Kerem Navot. Photograph: Hannah McCarthy
In 2024, the International Court of Justice
issued
an advisory opinion stating that Israeli settlements were illegal; all countries should cease trade with them; and Israel should evacuate all settlers from the occupied Palestinian territories.
Later that year, the Palestinian human rights NGO Al Haq
published
the results of an investigation into how Israeli settlers use resources and infrastructure which is denied to Palestinians, including through accommodation platforms such as Airbnb and Booking.com.
The report said 'short-term rental platforms create a lucrative business model that sustains the presence of settlers in remote areas far from the main settlements' infrastructure. These platforms also provide financial opportunities for the development of secondary illegal outposts as offshoots of larger settlements, further sustaining settlement expansion, and the settlement enterprise in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as a whole.'
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'Groundbreaking' case over Airbnb lettings in West Bank will set precedent for Irish companies, says Senator
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]
Booking.com did not respond to a request for comment, while Airbnb provided a link to
a 2019 statement
made after the tourism company faced several lawsuits when it
announced
in 2018 that it would 'remove listings in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank that are at the core of the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians. (Settlements in East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, which was annexed from Syria, were not included.)
After the 2018 announcement, Airbnb quickly faced litigation from Israelis and Jewish Americans who accused the company of discrimination in
Israeli
and
US federal courts
, while Airbnb
faced sanctions
under anti-boycott laws in several US states. Kerem Navot was also sued by a settler for authoring a report with Human Rights Watch entitled Bed and Breakfast on Stolen Land which was critical of Airbnb and Booking.com's operations in the West Bank.
Israeli anti-discrimination legislation was amended by the Israeli parliament in 2017 to discourage discrimination on the basis of place of residence. This limits the manner in which Israeli business can deny goods and services to settlers living in the West Bank, despite Palestinian citizens of Israel facing a risk of violence or harassment if they enter settlements, while some Jewish Israelis are ideologically opposed to doing business with settlements.
In more than a dozen US states, pro-Israel and Christian Evangelical groups have
successfully lobbied
for anti-boycott legislation which penalises American companies that refuse to do business with Israeli settlements, not just Israel.
Israel's 2011 boycott law,
which applies to Israeli citizens and companies, provides that anyone who calls for an economic, cultural, or academic boycott of Israel or 'Israeli-controlled territory', including Israeli settlements, is committing a civil offence.
'Unfortunately Airbnb reversed their decision and the settler who sued us asked to dismiss her lawsuit,' says Etkes, who wanted the case to go ahead to highlight Israel's conduct in the West Bank. ''Right now I don't think that we are under any specific risk of being sued because there are no big companies that are officially boycotting the settlements.'
After settling the various lawsuits, Airbnb
announced
in 2019 that it had 'always opposed the BDS movement' and it would continue all listings in the West Bank but that 'any profits generated for Airbnb by any Airbnb host activity in the entire West Bank will be donated to non-profit organisations dedicated to humanitarian aid that serve people in different parts of the world.'
Airbnb has implemented the same approach for listings in the disputed Caucus regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, while the company
suspended
operations in Russia and Belarus after financial sanctions were imposed on the two countries in the wake of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The Israeli NGO Who Profits, which is financially supported by Irish NGO Trócaire, has
said
that AirBnB's 'decision to donate the profits to non-profit organisations is a clear attempt to whitewash its involvement in promoting tourism on occupied land and providing services to settlements.'
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