Can Booking.com lawsuit end global profiteering off Israeli occupation?

Israeli settlements, illegal under international law, have been the backbone of occupational expansion over Palestinian lands for decades.

Yet, some people might still experience what it’s like to spend their holidays in hotels built on occupied lands or in buildings stolen from their indigenous owners.

Such notoriety is enabled by the world’s online tourism giants such as Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia, and TripAdvisor, which list hotels, apartments, and attractions in illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT).

Booking.com, a Dutch company headquartered in Amsterdam and the world’s most popular accommodation booking website, lists at least 45 hotels and rentals in settlements, including in East Jerusalem, according to a report by Amnesty International.

Since 2018, human rights groups, in collaboration with United Nations officials, have been urging the company to cease profiting from the illegal settlements. However, they received no response from the company until this May.

The late response stated that the company “wholeheartedly disagrees” with the illegal activity allegations and asserts that it is “in full compliance” with Dutch laws, without providing further evidence.

In 2022, the company was about to add a human rights warning label to settlement listings, but after the leak to international media and pressure from the Israeli Ministry of Tourism, they instead added a generic warning to all West Bank listings, stating the area "may be considered conflict-affected."

The company also claims that the US laws would prevent them from divesting from Israeli settlements, activists say.

After years of investigation, human rights organisations Al-Haq, The Rights Forum, The European Legal Support Center (ELSC), and the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) filed a complaint against Booking.com for it profiting from illegal Israeli settlements, also considered money laundering under Dutch law.

Discouragement policy

In the Netherlands, the Act on international crimes penalises individuals or legal entities liable for money laundering in case the money derives from war crimes, lawyer Willem Jebbink tells TRT World.

As Israel’s illegal settlements amount to war crimes under international criminal law, Booking.com has been blacklisted by the UN Human Rights Council since 2020 for continuing to offer accommodations in these settlements.

Yet, Dutch authorities have taken no action in accordance with their national law. Instead, they claim to “discourage” companies from doing business in these territories.

The discouragement policy is “a dead letter and a fig leaf to hide Dutch complicity,” describes Edwin van ’t Pad from The Rights Forum, adding that there is even evidence of the Dutch embassy in Israel repeatedly promoting businesses in the settlements.

Based on freedom of information requests, The Rights Forum discovered that since 2013, the Dutch Embassy in Tel Aviv has facilitated cooperation between Dutch and Israeli companies operating in settlements.

Mekorot, an Israeli water company that extracts more water from the OPT than permitted, thus violating international humanitarian law, was one of them.

Despite Mekorot's involvement in drilling illegal wells and providing unlimited water supplies to illegal Israeli settlements while simultaneously restricting water supply to Palestinian communities in the same region, the company was selected by the embassy for a cooperation forum organised by the Netherlands.

During a networking meeting between Dutch and Israeli businesses in Israel in 2022, Dutch Prime Minister Rutte was asked about collaborating with another company, Netafim, which supplies irrigation systems to settlements.

He responded, “We know that there are companies that do business in settlements. We now know this for this company too. The Netherlands is not in favour of this, but discouragement is not boycott. We have selected the companies for this network meeting based on their value to the Dutch economy.”

The Dutch government only discourages companies from operating in illegal Israeli settlements when those companies themselves reach out to the government ministries, according to Daan de Grefte, Legal Officer of the European Legal Support Center (ELSC).

The Rights Forum also reports that Dutch officials have openly stated several times that their discouragement regarding Booking.com will not go beyond informing the company of its place on the UN blacklist.

“That is why The Rights Forum is advocating for a total ban on economic ties to the settlements,” van ’t Pad tells TRT World.

Setting precedent

Headquartered in the Netherlands, Booking's revenue is officially declared and taxed in the country. That is why the advocacy groups chose to file the complaint to the Dutch prosecutor, Daan de Grefte tells TRT World.

While it is difficult for the co-filing organisations to determine the exact amount of money that entered the Dutch financial system via Booking's involvement in illegal Israeli settlements, they were able to make a conservative estimate based on publicly available information and corporate filings.

According to their estimates, Booking.com has laundered at least one million euros since it started listing stolen real estate in the OPT.

Lawyer Jebbink says they expect a decision from the public prosecutor by June or at least this summer. If the public prosecutor decides to prosecute, an investigation will be initiated.

"A conviction in the Netherlands could not mandate Booking to cease its activities worldwide," he says, adding that the goal is not to end the company's activities but to ensure it complies with Dutch and international law.

"This means stopping it from profiting from proceeds of illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem," the campaign’s lawyer says.

The activists expect this case to set a precedent, encouraging other advocacy organisations to follow suit by taking complicit companies to court in their respective national jurisdictions. They are also hoping to go after other complicit companies in the near future.

“We hope that this legal action – especially if an investigation will be opened by the prosecutor – will serve as a deterrent for other companies in other countries, but also in the Netherlands, to profit off the suffering of the Palestinian people,” de Grefte says.

“We also hope to start a highly important conversation in Western societies about the illegality of this conduct, which not only creates an air of legitimacy around Israel’s war crimes, but also harms the integrity of domestic financial systems.”