UPDATE: We are currently in Gaza, where we will be conducting on the ground research for one month. Whilst here, we will publish short articles about our research findings and the effects of the siege. We will work on longer pieces of analysis resulting from this trip over the coming year. Our Twitter account will be updated with news of our research as well as retweets and first hand accounts of Gaza residents’ experiences of the Israeli siege.
You can follow us on Twitter at @CorpOccupation
The Corporate Occupation research team will be in Gaza during November 2013 carrying out research on corporate complicity in the siege of Gaza in order to create resources for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israeli apartheid, militarism, colonisation and occupation.
The Israeli siege of Gaza is perpetuated with the full complicity of international corporations. International arms companies supply the war planes and unmanned drones, bombs and missiles used to subjugate the population. The walls and fences around Gaza have been built with the help of international construction companies and are fortified by surveillance technology provided by the international electronics sector. The coast is patrolled by gunboats, armed with weapons supplied by international companies.
The Gazan economy is crippled by enforced dependence on Israeli companies. Israeli energy companies hold an Israeli state imposed near monopoly on the provision of electricity used in Gaza. Israeli consumer goods, which flood Gaza’s market places, are given preference at the crossings into Gaza while the attempt at maintaining an independent supply of goods into Gaza through the tunnels is met by violence from both Israel and Egypt.
The siege isolates the people of Gaza, separating them from the rest of Palestine and limiting their communication with the growing international Palestine solidarity movement. We aim to make new contacts and connections between people in Gaza and the solidarity movement.
We will be publishing our research on this site.
Please contact us if you have ideas for information we could gather that would be useful to your campaign. We are happy to come and speak to campaigners in workshops or public meetings on our return. If you would like to donate to the project click here.
7 Comments
Michael · 21st March 2013 at 10:05 am
Let’s face up to the facts – you would be happy if Israel didn’t exist. You believe everything you are told by every Palestinian and are so bigotted and blind any comments are distorted to fit your own agenda.
How about looking up the definition of the word apartheid? You obviously don’t know what it means. Even South Africans are appalled by the use of such a word in the context of Israel.
tomandersoncw · 2nd May 2013 at 12:39 pm
We report the facts of the situation. Our research is intended to support the Palestinian call for a campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israeli apartheid, occupation and militarism.
Our work is not motivated by affirming the right of any state to exist or otherwise, but in solidarity with the struggle of oppressed people to gain equality and freedom.
In terms of the use of the word apartheid, this is not a direct comparison with the former South African system of apartheid, although there are many similarities, but a description of a system of discrimination based on race. Apartheid is, in our view, an accurate description of the policies of the state of Israel against Palestinians.
Veronica Ball · 15th December 2013 at 5:43 pm
Michael is right in that what is happening in Gaza is not to be compared to apartheid as practiced in South Africa but much worse.
The governing group in South Africa always needed the labour of those they labelled as “black” whereas in Palestine the behaviour of the Israelis is more in keeping with the actions of the ruling group in Australia in their treatment of the “aborigines” and also the ruling group in the United states in their treatment of the original inhabitants of North America (“the Red Indians”).
Both had no use for these people and wanted them to” disappear”.
This is also the view of the controlling group in Israel
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