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News ID: 83821
Publish Date : 13 October 2020 - 22:11

UK Firm Faces Probe Over Role in Palestinian Home Demolitions

LONDON (Dispatches) – UK manufacturing giant JCB is to be investigated by the British government following reports that machinery built by the company is used by the Zionist regime to demolish Palestinian homes and build illegal colonial-settlements on occupied Palestinian land.
The news comes after Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights (LPHR) lodged a complaint last year with Britain’s National Contact Point (NCP) for the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, situated in the Department of International Trade. The lawyers involved claim that JCB contributes and is directly linked "through their business operations” to the Zionist regime’s home demolition policies targeting Palestinians.
The complaint says that JCB products have been used in incidents in ten villages or areas in the occupied Palestinian territories between 2016 and 2019. In total, 89 homes were demolished in these incidents, displacing at least 484 individuals.
The NCP said that complaints made by the charity against JCB in relation to the use of its machinery in the regime’s illegal demolitions and settlement construction in the occupied territories warranted further investigation.
According to the Guardian, the company gave Prime Minister Boris Johnson £25,000 for his leadership campaign. The firm has given the Conservative Party more than £10 million since 2010.
Since Trump took office in December 2016, the occupying regime has stepped up its settlement construction activities in defiance of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, which pronounced settlements in the West Bank and East al-Quds "a flagrant violation under international law.”
All Zionist settlements are illegal under international law as they are built on occupied land.
The Zionist regime has recently approved construction of hundreds of more illegal settler units in the occupied West Bank.
Hassan Bureijia, head of the Committee against the Wall and Settlements in Bethlehem, told Palestine’s official WAFA news agency on Monday that officials have given the green light for plans to build 500 units in Tzur Hadassah settlement, located 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) southwest of al-Quds.
Bureijia said the occupying regime is pushing plans for the massive expansion of its settlements in Bethlehem, through further illegal annexation of privately-owned Palestinian land.
Palestinians, who seek an independent state in the occupied West Bank and Gaza with East al-Quds as its capital, view the deals as betrayal of their cause.
More than 600,000 Zionists live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds.