"Settlement businesses unavoidably contribute to Israeli policies that dispossess and harshly discriminate against Palestinians, while profiting from Israel’s theft of Palestinian land and other resources," HRW business director Arvind Ganesan said.
Israel has constructed over 230 illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since its war with Palestinians in 1967. HRW stressed that businesses trading with settlers are helping these communities grow.
Settlement businesses benefit from unrestricted access to Palestinian land, water and receive government subsidies. They oversee the cultivation of thousands of hectares of Palestinian land and export agricultural products that are often labelled as made in Israel.
At the same time, Palestinians are barred from building or extracting natural resources in parts of the occupied West Bank. Between 2000 and 2012, Israel rejected 94 percent of construction permit requests filed by Palestinians.
Over 500,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to United Nations figures. The settlements are considered illegal by the UN, and West Bank is considered an occupied territory by the International Court of Justice.
