The Fifth Committee of the United Nations is set to decide next week whether to allocate funds to ensure that a motion by the body’s Human Rights Council to create a “blacklist” of companies operating in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights can be implemented.Haaretz, last Thursday, had a long and laudatory interview with the editor of Palestinian newspaper Al Quds. The article noted that the editorial offices of the newspaper are in the Atarot Industrial Zone in "East Jerusalem."
The Human Rights Council motion had passed in March with no countries voting against. The resolution required UN human rights officials to produce a database of “all business enterprises” that have enabled or profited from the growth of Israeli settlements, Haaretz reported.
The proposal, put forward by the Palestinian Authority and Arab states, included a condemnation of settlements and called on companies not to do business with Israeli settlements.
Palestinians consider Atarot (which was a Jewish community before 1948) to be an "illegal settlement." Yet the Al Quds newspaper has no problem having its offices in this Israeli industrial park, which means that it is profiting from Israeli settlements.
Will the UN go after Al Quds, and the many other Arab-owned businesses in Atarot and similar industrial zones? Will it go after Shweiki Glass which sold products to the Jerusalem light rail project?
Or is it only the businesses that are owned by Jews that fall under this blacklist?
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