Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Airbnb Denies Israeli Claim That It’s Reversing Its Settlement Ban

Update 3:55 p.m.

Airbnb denied claims made by Israel’s Ministry of Tourism that the hospitality company was reversing its month-old policy of banning listings of properties in West Bank settlements,.

After a meeting in Jerusalem on Monday between Israeli government officials and a delegation from the company, Tourism Minister Yariv Levin announced that Airbnb had change its mind. “This is a step in the right direction,” Levin said in a statement. According to Haaretz, Airbnb itself put out a statement in Hebrew saying “Our policy will not be implemented.”

But a later statement from Airbnb in English said previous reports were “inaccurate.”

“Airbnb expressed its unequivocal rejection of the BDS movement and communicated its commitment to develop its business in Israel, enabling more tourists from around the world to enjoy the wonders of the country and its people….Airbnb communicated that we are developing the tools needed to implement our policy and that process includes continuing our dialogue with the Government of Israel and its stakeholders,” the statement continued.

An Airbnb spokesperson told the Forward that the earlier statement was made in error.

In its announcement last month explaining its original move barring settlement listings, the company noted that most countries consider Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal.

The move was met with an outcry not only from Israeli government figures, but also from American politicians. The state of Illinois, which in 2015 enacted a law banning state government entities from contracting with companies that boycott Israel, told Airbnb last week that they had 90 days to explain themselves or they would be put on the state government’s blacklist.

Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Gilad Erdan had beseeched outgoing Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, as well as governors or governors-elect of New York, California, Missouri and Florida, to make such moves, Haaretz reported.

Approximately 200 of the 22,000 Israeli properties listed on Airbnb are in West Bank settlements.

Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.