WEST BANK (Dispatches) – Foreign investors are fleeing Israeli-occupied territories over concerns that it has become an absolute dictatorship, the President and Co-Founder of the Israel Institute for Innovation, Leo Bakman, has told the Haaretz newspaper.
Backman’s institute serves as an incubator for 2,500 startups. Speaking as the head of the NGO he described the growing unease among foreign investors in doing business in the occupied territories.
Israel has been an occupying regime for most of its history, since the occupation in 1948 following the ethnic cleansing of three quarters of the indigenous population of Palestine. Wall to wall consensus within the human rights community that the occupying regime is practicing apartheid has dented that image but western countries nevertheless insist on calling it a ‘democracy’.
So-called judicial reform introduced by the current far-right regime led by Benjamin Netanyahu has, however, caused unease over the occupying regime’s self-proclaimed status as a ‘democracy’. The regime’s president, Isaac Herzog, has himself said that the occupation regime is facing “constitutional collapse.” Netanyahu’s coalition has made the overhaul of the judiciary one of its main priorities. Changes include plans to give the cabinet control over the appointment of judges and all but eliminate the court’s ability to strike down legislation.
The plans have been met with waves of protest which are dealing blows to the regime.
Recent concerns over the deteriorating situation even expressed by the staunch ally the U.S. have been swiftly followed by foreign investors. “Investors are taking a step back and saying: ‘First, decide whether you are a democracy or a dictatorship, and then we’ll talk’,” Backman is reported saying while commenting on flight of foreign investors from the occupied territories, an outcome which the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign has been urging for decades.
Backman added that the occupying regime’s ‘judicial reform’ was like “shooting ourselves in the head.” He went on to explain that many companies are not sure how they’ll be able to get the money out of the occupied territories. Questions have come up about the regime and the actions of the current administration “has created a terrible feeling and great anxiety.”
Backman said that he has been an entrepreneur for 25 years, and in the past few weeks he has come across a question he never expected to answer: “Why Israel?” It is no longer easy to sell Israel to foreign investors.