A new Nakba is not only a dream of the Israeli far right, but would also be a profitable opportunity for the ‘free market’. Several western companies are speculating in the occupied Palestinian territories, and the banks have promoted this with more than $300 billion in investments and shares already tied up in the territories.
A recent report by Giulia Bosetti for Spotlight, RaiNews24 [the Italian state TV’s news channel], revealed how the occupation of Gaza is not just a plan of a handful of Zionists, as highlighted by the slogans of Daniella Weiss, president of the settler organisation Nahala (“God gave us the land of Israel!”), or by Belazel Smotrich, Israeli finance minister (“Without settlements there is no security!”). In fact, there are specific economic interests of capitalist groups that go hand in hand with Israel’s imperialist policy.
One of the main sectors seeking to benefit is the construction/real estate sector. On the official page of the Harey Zarav agency, images of hypothetical seaside villas on the rubble of the Gaza Strip are shown. More than a million housing units have already been built on occupied land and there seems to be no limit to how far their “dream of bringing the free market” extends.
As the report notes, the ‘free market’ has already set foot in Palestine. A June 2023 study by the OHCHR (United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights) presents a list of 96 Israeli and Western companies involved in commercial activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
This list includes well-known services such as TripAdvisor, Booking.com and AirBnB, which offer buildings taken from the Palestinians or built on occupied land on their platforms, legitimising and profiting from Israel’s abuses. The superficial attempts to cover up what they are doing, such as AirBnB declaration that “we will donate the revenue to charity,” fail to hide the fact they are complicit in real war crimes.
War, as Lenin explained, does not derive from the mere ill will by governments, but is an expression of the imperialist interests of the ruling classes.
A further study presented last December by the ‘Don’t Buy Into Occupation’ coalition shows that as many as 776 financial institutions are involved economically in the Israeli settlements with a total of approximately $160 billion in loans, and a further $140 billion in equity shares. In the top position for lending we find BNP Paribas ($22.19 billion), HSBC ($14.21 billion), Deutsche Bank ($13.23 billion) and, in tenth place, the Italian bank Unicredit ($6.66 billion).
All these financial manoeuvres, carried out in broad daylight, demonstrate to us once again that the capitalist system has no intention of safeguarding the Palestinian people, but rather is unhesitant about profiting even from war and extermination.