Top Issue 1-2024

8 January 2014

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Dutch pension fund withdraws from Israeli banks – MEP urges other EU investors to follow

Martina Anderson MEP at Palestinian prisoners' release last October

Sinn Féin MEP Martina Anderson urged other EU investors to show the same social responsibility to pressurise Israel ‘to adhere to international law and the terms of dozens of UN resolutions it has consistently ignored with impunity’


THE withdrawal by the Netherlands’ largest pension fund firm of all its investments from Israel’s five largest banks because they are in the West Bank or involved in financing construction in the settlements has been welcomed by Sinn Féin MEP Martina Anderson.

The Irish MEP urged other EU investors “to show the same social responsibility to pressurise Israel to adhere to international law and the terms of dozens of UN resolutions it has consistently ignored with impunity”.

Pension fund manager PGGM’s decision came into effect on 1 January.

Martina Anderson said this is in line with opinion issued by the International Court of Justice in The Hague in 2004 ruling that settlements in occupied Palestinian territory are illegal and violate Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

That article states:

“The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

PGGM has a policy of “social responsibility” and has decided it would be impossible to create a firewall between its investments in Israeli banks and the banks’ activities in the Occupied Territories so it has decided to withdraw its investments in Israel’s banks.

This is the latest decision by Dutch companies in taking determined action against Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian Territories.

Over recent weeks, Dutch firms have engaged in a wave of boycotts, divestments and sanctions against Israeli firms.

Last month, the Dutch water company Vitens announced that it was suspending co-operation with Israel’s national water company, Mekorot, given the latter’s operations in West Bank settlements.

A few weeks earlier, another Dutch company cancelled a contract to build a sewage treatment plant that it had signed with Jerusalem’s water company, Hagihon, because the plant was to be located over the Green Line.

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