Airbnb on Monday said it would remove listings in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, a move Israel called a “wretched capitulation” to boycotters and Palestinians hailed as a step toward peace.
The decision, affecting about 200 listings, would take effect in the coming days, Airbnb said.
Israel captured the West Bank in a 1967 war. Its settlements there are considered illegal by most world powers.
Photo: Reuters
Palestinians deem the settlements, and the military presence needed to protect them, to be obstacles to their goal of establishing a state. Israel disputes this.
“We concluded that we should remove listings in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank that are at the core of the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians,” Airbnb said on its Web site. “Our hope is that someday sooner rather than later, a framework is put in place where the entire global community is aligned so there will be a resolution to this historic conflict and a clear path forward for everybody to follow.”
Palestinians and their supporters had long lobbied Airbnb to delist the settlements.
Israel strongly opposes such calls for boycotts, which it considers a biased approach to the conflict.
Israeli Minister of Tourism Yariv Levin called Airbnb’s move “the most wretched of wretched capitulations to the boycott efforts.”
Speaking on Israel’s Channel 13 television, he said that Israel was not told of the decision in advance and it would respond by backing lawsuits by settlement listers against Airbnb in US courts.
Waleed Assraf, head of a Palestinian anti-settlement group run by the Palestine Liberation Organization, welcomed Airbnb’s decision.
Should other companies follow suit, “this will contribute to achieving peace,” he said.
Oded Revivi, mayor of the West Bank settlement of Efrat and a representative of the umbrella settler council Yesha, said that Airbnb’s decision was contrary to the company’s stated mission of helping “to bring people together in as many places as possible around the world.”
“When they make such a decision, they get involved with politics, which ... is going to defeat the actual purpose of the enterprise itself,” Revivi said.
Human Rights Watch said the move came on the eve of its publication of a 65-page report it has carried out into tourist rental listings in settlements, including by Airbnb.
“Airbnb’s decision to end its listings in Israeli settlements is an important recognition that such listings can’t square with its human rights responsibilities,” the group said on Monday. “We urge other companies to follow suit.”
The report was released yesterday morning.
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