Support our new legal battle against Booking.com for money laundering and profiting from stolen Palestinian land!
Help us end corporate impunity.
A coalition of dedicated organisations, including Al-Haq, SOMO, the ELSC and The Rights Forum, have taken a bold step by filing a criminal complaint against Booking.com to the Dutch Public Prosecution Service. This complaint aims to hold Booking.com accountable for profiting from illegal settlements in occupied Palestine, which are recognised as war crimes under international law.
Our extensive research has uncovered Booking.com's facilitation of the rental of vacation homes built on land stolen from indigenous Palestinian communities. Despite being aware of the legal risks and crimes stemming from Israel’s colonisation of Palestinian land, Booking.com has continued to offer accommodation in at least seventeen illegal settlements.
By facilitating the rental of these illegal settlements as vacation homes, Booking.com not only is in breach of its own human rights policy, but also profits from grave violations of international law, and directly breaches Dutch criminal law, which specifically states that profiting from war crimes is illegal.
Settlements contribute to grave human rights violations, are part and parcel of the settler-colonial apartheid regime imposed on Palestinians, and are destructive to any prospect of justice. Booking.com must be held accountable for its role in perpetuating the colonisation of Palestine and making it profitable!
By profiting from serious violations of international humanitarian law, Booking.com is bringing proceeds of crime into the Dutch financial system – the co-filers argue that the company is therefore
guilty of laundering at least EUR 1 million!
Our Goal: End Booking.com’s involvement in international crimes on stolen Palestinian land and put a stop to corporate impunity for profiting from Israel’s violations of international humanitarian law.
Our Ask: Major cases like these cost money! We are calling on supporters like you to join us in this fight for justice. We need at least 15,000 euros to cover the legal fees! These funds will be used to cover legal fees of the lawyer for the criminal complaint, and legal fees needed to file an appeal in court in case the prosecutor decides not to investigate our complaint.
In case the donations exceed the total amount needed for this case, the donations will be used for other projects of strategic litigation against European private or public actors involved in war crimes committed in Palestine. Your donation, no matter how small, will make a difference in supporting our efforts to hold Booking.com accountable and bring an end to its complicity with Israeli settler colonialism.
Spreading the word on social media, and within your networks and WhatsApp groups will also massively help amplify our message and garner more support for the case!
>> Instagram Reel to share >> Tweet to re-tweet
Who are we? Palestinian civil society has been alerting on Booking.com and other companies’ involvement in war crimes against the Palestinian indigenous population for decades. They have now teamed up with Dutch NGOs to sue the company in the Netherlands. The co-filers are:
Al-Haq, the oldest Palestinian human rights organisation in the region, established in 1979 to protect and promote human rights and the rule of law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), the organisation has special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council.
SOMO, a Dutch NGO specialised in corporate complicity in human rights violations.
The Rights Forum, an independent Dutch NGO working on a just policy on Palestine in the Netherlands.
The European Legal Support Center (ELSC), which engages in strategic litigation in Europe to support Palestinian rights advocacy and to end impunity of private and public actors which facilitate Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights.
They are supported by the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy (PIPD), an NGO advocating for the liberation of Palestine from all forms of settler colonialism, and the DBIO coalition, a coalition of 25 civil society organisations coming together to investigate and expose the financial relationships between businesses involved in the illegal Israeli settlement enterprise in the OPT and European Financial Institutions (FIs).
Now, more than ever, it is crucial to support Palestinians in the face of Israeli settler colonialism which is facilitated by European private actors like Booking.com!
Will you stand with us in demanding an end to corporate profit from egregious crimes committed against the Palestinian people? Together, we can make a difference. Thank you for your solidarity and support.
Resources / Links:
Don't Buy into Occupation: Exposing the financial flows into illegal Israeli settlements
https://dontbuyintooccupation.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/DBIO-report-DEF_aangepast.pdf
Al-Haq: Finding David: Unlawful Settlement Tourism in Jerusalem’s so-called ‘City of David’
https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/20872.html
Amnesty International, Destination Occupation
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2019/01/destination-occupation-digital-tourism-israel-illegal-settlements/
Human Rights Watch, Occupation Inc.
https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/01/19/occupation-inc/how-settlement-businesses-contribute-israels-violations