Caterpillar And Priceline On UN List For Doing Business In Occupied West Bank
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JERUSALEM (JTA) — The United Nations Human Rights Council has sent letters to 150 companies warning them that they will be placed on a database of companies that do business in Israeli settlements.
Caterpillar, Priceline.com, TripAdvisor and Airbnb are among the 30 U.S. companies on the list.
The letters sent by the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Raad Al Hussein, ask the businesses to clarify their involvement in the West Bank.
The Trump administration has referred to the database as a blacklist and urged the Human Rights Council not to publish it, saying it is counterproductive to Israeli-Palestinian peace initiatives.
The list reportedly will be published by the end of the year.
The World Jewish Congress delivered a statement Monday to the Human Rights Council calling on the Office of the High Commissioner to refrain from publishing the database.
“It is most unfortunate that an important U.N. body would blackmail global businesses into joining a hypocritical international boycott campaign against Israel,” the group’s CEO, Robert Singer, said in a statement.
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