‘Stop Booking Apartheid’ Targets Booking.com’s Israeli Settlement Profits

Date: 02 May 2025 - 22:38

News ID: ۱۳۹۰۸۱

WEST BANK (Dispatches) – A
coalition of workers and activists has launched a campaign targeting online travel agency Booking.com, which they accuse of profiting from the Zionist regime’s war crimes.
The “Stop Booking Apartheid” campaign, led by Palestinian and left-wing organizations including Progressive International and BDS Netherlands, is targeting Booking.com’s 55 listings in the occupied West Bank and East Al-Quds.
The travel site, which is headquartered in the Netherlands and has a parent company in the U.S., also lists sites in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.
Israeli settlements built on stolen Palestinian land are considered illegal under international law.
Booking.com has featured listings in 12 different illegal West Bank settlements, seven settlement neighborhoods in occupied East Al-Quds, and 28 settlements in the Syrian Golan Heights.
Launched on Friday, the “Stop Booking Apartheid” campaign is also led by No Tech for Apartheid, a coalition of Google and Amazon workers campaigning against the companies’ involvement with Israel, and B.WorkersforPalestine, a newly formed group made up of Booking.com workers in response to the “internal repression of Palestine solidarity in Booking.com”.
“We wish more of our co-workers realized what the company is really asking of us,” one Booking.com worker, a member of the group, said.
“They want us to pretend that providing war criminals with a revenue stream is business as usual. It’s time to put an end to this complicity - or else Booking.com becomes a shameful, indelible stain on our resumes and conscience.”
Kimia Talebi, the Watermelon Index organizer for Progressive International, added: “Booking.com workers are refusing to be complicit in the displacement of Palestinians, yet they are being silenced and ignored by the company. Workers have a right to know about the legal risks posed to them in processing illegal settlements.”
On 8 May, Stop Booking Apartheid will carry out a day of action at Booking.com offices around the world, including at the company’s headquarters in Amsterdam and in Manchester, northern England.
Booking.com BV and its parent company, Booking Holdings Inc, which is incorporated in the U.S. tax haven state of Delaware, are both listed on the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights database of businesses operating in Israeli settlements.
Companies are placed on this database if they engage in any number of listed activities, including the “provision of services and utilities supporting the maintenance and existence of settlements”, “the supply of equipment for the demolition of housing and property”, and the “use of natural resources, in particular water and land, for business purposes”.