After Airbnb, calls for Booking.com to leave West Bank

JERUSALEM - Human Rights Watch on Tuesday urged Booking.com to follow the example of Airbnb and withdraw listings for rentals located in settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Airbnb's move came on the eve of the publication of a report by Human Rights Watch on tourist rental listings in Israeli settlements. The New York-based group hailed Airbnb's "important recognition that such listings can't square with its human rights responsibilities".

The US-based rights group issued its report on Tuesday and called on Booking.com to follow Airbnb's "positive step".

Palestinians who want to establish an independent state in territory including the West Bank that Israel captured in a 1967 war welcomed the San Francisco-based firm's move.

Israel strongly denounced Airbnb's decision and threatened legal action against the company, calling it a "wretched capitulation" to boycotters.

"By ending its brokering of rentals in illegal settlements on land off-limits to Palestinians, Airbnb has taken a stand against discrimination and land confiscation and theft," Omar Shakir, HRW's director for Israel and the Palestinian territories, said.

"It is an important and welcome step and we encourage other companies like Booking.com to follow their lead and stop listing in settlements."

HRW issued the report on the online reservations firms, entitled "Bed and Breakfast on Stolen Land," along with Israeli NGO Kerem Navot.

It says Airbnb, based in the United States, listed at least 139 properties in West Bank settlements between March and July.

Booking.com, based in the Netherlands, had 26 as of July, it said.

A total of 17 are on land Israel acknowledges is privately owned by Palestinians, according to HRW.

"Israelis and foreigners may rent properties in settlements, but Palestinian ID holders are effectively barred," HRW said in a statement announcing the report's release.

That is "the only example in the world the organisations found in which Airbnb hosts have no choice but to discriminate against guests based on national or ethnic origin," it said.

Israeli settlements are considered illegal under international law and major roadblocks to peace, as they are built on land Palestinians see as part of their future state.

Around 400,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements, which range in size from tiny hamlets to large towns. A further 200,000 live in settlements in occupied east Jerusalem.

Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat has welcomed Airbnb's decision as "an initial positive step".

25 US states

Israeli Tourism Minister Yariv Levin on Tuesday threatened legal against Airbnb in the United States and Israel over its move, calling it "hypocritical and disgusting".

Israel plans to consult with the Trump administration over the decision, a cabinet minister said on Tuesday.

"We will approach the US government because 25 US states have sanctions against American companies that boycott Israel," Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan said on Israeli Army Radio.

"In this respect, there is no distinction between this part or that part of the State of Israel," he said, asserting that the occupied West Bank should also fall under the anti-boycott protection.

Palestine Legal, a Palestinian rights group that monitors US anti-boycott legislation, said on its website that some of the laws enacted at US state level apply both to Israel and "territories controlled by Israel", an allusion to areas such as the occupied West Bank.

On its own website, Airbnb said "many in the global community have stated that companies should not be doing business here (in the occupied territories) because they believe companies should not profit on lands where people have been displaced".

Subsequently, it concluded it should remove the approximately 200 "listings in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank that are at the core of the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians".

Erdan said Airbnb "will have to explain why it is taking this discriminatory and racist line here in particular and not in other conflict zones in the world".

Erdan, pointman in Israel's campaign against the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that wants to isolate it over occupation of land Palestinians seek for a state, offered government legal advice to any hosts who want to sue Airbnb.

Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, urged the UN Human Rights Council to release a database of companies "profiting from the Israeli colonial occupation".

Oded Revivi, mayor of the West Bank settlement of Efrat, said Airbnb had violated its own stated mission "to bring people together in as many places as possible around the world".

Israel's Tourism Ministry said it was looking at options, including new taxation, for restricting Airbnb activities throughout Israel.

Airbnb is considering an IPO next year after announcing in February that it would not make a public debut this year.