CAF, a Basque company singled out by the UN for profit from the occupation of Palestine
According to a UN report released next Monday, the Beasain company is one of the companies benefiting from Israeli crimes in Palestine.
The CAF is once again targeted by the United Nations and human rights organizations for the construction of a light train connecting Israeli-driven illegal colonies in East Jerusalem, a railway project that strengthens the occupation of the Palestinian territories and hinders the political solution.
A report by UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine, Francesca Albanese, states that the Basque company, like other Western organizations, makes a profit from "illegal occupation, apartheid and now genocide" in Israel.
Until the beginning of the year, CAF, which has the Basque Government among its shareholders, had participated in the expansion of the red line of the Jerusalem tram, which is now building the green line connecting the illegal colonies of East Jerusalem.
Accordingto experts from Amnesty International and other NGOs, this railway project strengthens Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian territories and prevents a political solution to the conflict.
In January 2019, the works council asked the management to withdraw from the tender on the grounds that this project "violated international legality. We believe that any tram project in any city in the world, and of course in Jerusalem, should be carried out in accordance with human rights and international law."
After Albanes presented the report to the UN Human Rights Council on 3 July, Amnesty International again stressed that "the light train contributes to the maintenance of illegal settlements, the consolidation of illegal occupation and the annexation of East Jerusalem by Israel".
It therefore urged CAF to "abandon this project and any other that the Israeli Government may promote in the Occupied Territory of Palestine".
Trains connecting settlements
The Red Line is 13.8 km long and has 23 stations. Opened in 2011, it links the illegal colonies of French Hill (north-east of the city), Givat HaMivtar and Pisgat Ze'ev, the largest colony in East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel after the 1967 war and annexed unilaterally in 1980.
The Green Line, on the other hand, is expected to be inaugurated in 2026. It will connect the settlement of Gilo in the south, where about 30,000 Israelites already live, with the University of Mount Scopus, and will pass, among other things, through the settlement of Givat HaMatos in the occupied territory of East Jerusalem.
Aviv Tatarsky , a researcher at the Israeli NGO Ir Amim, who works to document the occupation of East Jerusalem, believes that the importance of the project lies not in the expansion of the railway network, which is also connected by road, but in the fact that this public infrastructure further normalizes the occupation of Israel and contributes to the expansion of Israeli colonies in the city.
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