Hundreds of Palestinian workers have been left unemployed after the SodaStream factory where they worked moved out of the occupied West Bank and back into Israel following an international boycott campaign. Daniel Birnbaum, chief executive of SodaStream International, said the last 74 Palestinian workers left on Monday after being denied permits to work inside Israel at the new factory.
“We gave them an opportunity to work,” he told Israel’s Channel 2 TV, calling Palestinians the main victims of the boycott movement while also criticising the Israeli government for not granting them work permits.
“The government of Israel somehow couldn’t overcome their own bureaucracy or hard-headedness and figure out the tremendous challenge of enabling 74 good people … to continue to let them do what they have been doing.”
In all about 500 Palestinians have lost their jobs after the factory moved in 2015 amid a high-profile boycott campaign known as BDS, meaning boycott, divestment and sanctions.
The movement seeks to ostracise Israel by lobbying corporations, artists and academic institutions to sever ties with the Jewish state. Supporters say the boycott is aimed at furthering Palestinian aspirations for independence, and that their efforts are modelled on an earlier campaign against apartheid South Africa.
Critics say the campaign is not aimed at Israeli policies but at delegitimising Israel itself. Some accuse it of antisemitism because it singles out Israel for boycott while ignoring countries with poor human rights records.
Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967 in a move never recognised by the international community.
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