The Ministry of Social Rights, Consumption and Agenda 2030 will investigate those companies that advertise in Spain goods or services from the Palestinian territories occupied by the State of Israel. The initiative advances from the department directed by Pablo Bustinduy, is part of the Royal Decree approved last week by the coalition government, which declares the advertising of both products from and of the services provided in them illicit. The Royal Decree, published on September 23 in the Official State Gazetteconsiders this practice as illicit advertising, also prohibits the importation of products, veto the transfers of defense or double use material to Israel and force to specify the postal code of origin in Israeli goods to guarantee the traceability of its origin.
The General Directorate of Consumption will be responsible for investigating whether there are companies that, taking advantage of the occupation, have carried out marketing activities in Spain. Minister Bustinduy had already advanced in July, during the presentation of the act Alliances and actions that his department would put “all the necessary resources” to ensure that no company that operates in Spain has its results accounts “stained with the blood of the Palestinian people.”
From the department directed by Bustinduy, it is considered that maintaining this offer of services in the Spanish market contributes to perpetuating the colonial efforts of Israel in the Palestinian territories and, which constitutes an illicit activity according to international law, as explained by the Ministry.
The Ministry of Consumer, therefore, will investigate companies that would be taking advantage of this occupation. To do this, the information available in the report published in July by Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur, entitled Of the economy of occupation . In that document, the United Nations representative for the occupied Palestinian territories pointed out with name and surnames to several companies that would be economically benefiting from the occupation of these territories.
The rapporteur included, among others, the Spanish company Auxiliary Constructions of Railways (CAF), which he accused of participating in the expansion of the Light Rail of Jerusalem, with new lines and stations that connect illegal colonies with Western Jerusalem, the part of the city internationally recognized as Israeli. While other companies had retired due to international pressure, CAF continued linked to the project.
The report also denounced that they have been raised with excavators and heavy machinery of companies such as Caterpillar (USA), Hyundai (South Korea) and Volvo (Sweden), also used to demolish the homes of the Palestinians in the same territories. Hanson, the Israeli subsidiary of the German Heidelberg, would have supplied millions of tons of stone to build houses for the settlers.
The document underlined the collaboration of American entities such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to provide Israeli drones with the ability to attack in swarm, of IBM to create a biometric database of the Palestinian and Palantir population to apply artificial intelligence to the bombings on Gaza through objective selection programs such as Lavender. Microsoft and Alphabet were also mentioned in the technological part and, in the financial, entities such as BNP Paribas and Barclays, together with Blackrock, Vanguard and Pimco, a subsidiary of Allianz, in the section of the investment and pension funds.
The Ministry of Consumption recalls that similar initiatives are already underway in other European neighbors, such as in the Netherlands, where the Prosecutor’s Office has opened investigations for alleged money laundering linked to these activities. The objective, they explain from the Ministry, is to advance to ensure that “any company with activity in Spain abandons any operation linked to the Israeli occupation, whether directly or indirectly.”
The consumer initiative coincides with the publication, this time last week, of a new report by the UN that develop activities at the West Bank occupied by Israel. Of these, 138 are Israelis and 20 are foreign, distributed among 10 countries. Spain appears as the second non -Israeli country with the greatest presence in the list, with four companies: on the one hand there are ineco engineering, under the Ministry of Transportation, and ACS, the infrastructure giant. The two. On the other are the Semi Industrial Assembly firm (subsidiary of ACS before until 2021) and, again, the Basque CAF.
