FROM ECONOMY OF OCCUPATION TO ECONOMY OF GENOCIDE
By UN - Human Synthesis- T.Chr.- 07 September 2025
UNITED NATIONS - Fifty-ninth session
16 June–11 July 2025
Agenda item 7: Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories. Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.
Summary
This report investigates the corporate machinery sustaining Israel’s settler-colonial project of displacement and replacement of the Palestinians in the occupied territory. While political leaders and governments shirk their obligations, far too many corporate entities have profited from Israel’s economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now, genocide. The complicity exposed by this report is just the tip of the iceberg; ending it will not happen without holding the private sector accountable, including its executives. International law recognizes varying degrees of responsibility – each requiring scrutiny and accountability, particularly in this case, where a people’s self-determination and very existence are at stake. This is a necessary step to end the genocide and dismantle the global system that has allowed it.
I. Introduction
1. Colonial endeavours and their associated genocides have historically been driven and enabled by the corporate sector. [1] Commercial interests have contributed to the dispossession of Indigenous people and lands –a mode of domination known as “colonial racial capitalism”. [2] The same is true of Israeli colonization of Palestinian lands, its expansion into the occupied Palestinian territory and its institutionalization of a regime of settler-colonial apartheid. [3] After denying Palestinian self-determination for decades, Israel is now imperilling the very existence of the Palestinian people in Palestine.
2. The role of corporate entities in sustaining Israel’s illegal occupation and ongoing genocidal campaign in Gaza is the subject of this investigation, which focuses on how corporate interests underpin Israeli settler-colonial the twofold logic of displacement and replacement aimed at dispossessing and erasing Palestinians from their lands. It discusses corporate entities in various sectors: arms manufacturers, tech firms, building and construction companies, extractive and service industries, banks, pension funds, insurers, universities and charities.
These entities enable the denial of self-determination and other structural violations in the occupied Palestinian territory, including occupation, annexation and crimes of apartheid and genocide, as well as a long list of ancillary crimes and human rights violations, from discrimination, wanton destruction, forced displacement and pillage, to extrajudicial killing and starvation.
3. Had proper human rights due diligence been undertaken, corporate entities would have long ago disengaged from Israeli occupation. Instead, post-October 2023, corporate actors have contributed to the acceleration of the displacement-replacement process throughout the military campaign that has pulverized Gaza and displaced the largest number of Palestinians in the West Bank since 1967
4. While it is impossible to fully capture the scale and extent of decades of corporate connivance in the exploitation of the occupied Palestinian territory, this report exposes the integration of the economies of settler-colonial occupation and genocide. It calls for accountability for corporate entities and their executives at both domestic and international levels: commercial endeavours enabling and profiting from the obliteration of innocent people’s lives must cease. Corporate entities must refuse to be complicit in human rights violations and international crimes or be held to account.
II. Methodology
5. “Corporate entities” in this report refers to business enterprises, multinational corporations, for-profit and not-for-profit entities, whether private, public or State-owned.[7] Corporate responsibility applies regardless of the size, sector, operational context, ownership and structure of the entity. [8]
6. The report builds on extensive literature, especially by civil society [9] and by the Working Group on Business and Human Rights, on how Israel has created and maintained its own economy through the occupation, and a captive economy for the Palestinians.
7. It also builds upon and situates within the broader matrix of Israel’s unlawful occupation, the database established by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), pursuant to Human Rights Council resolutions 31/36 and 53/25. The “UN Database” lists only business enterprises that have “directly and indirectly enabled, facilitated and profited from the construction and growth of the settlements”. 10]
8. The Special Rapporteur developed a database of 1000 corporate entities from the unprecedented 200+ submissions received, following her call for input when preparing this investigation. [11] This helped map how corporate entities worldwide have been implicated in human rights violations and international crimes in the occupied Palestinian territory. Over 45 entities named in the report have been duly informed of the facts that led the Special Rapporteur to formulate a series of allegations: 15 replied. The complex web of corporate structures – and the often obscured links between parents and subsidiaries, franchises, joint ventures, licencees, etc. – implicates many more. The investigation behind this report demonstrates the lengths to which corporations will go to conceal their complicity.[12]
9. The report is complemented by an annex presenting the relevant legal framework.
III. Legal context
10. The law governing corporate responsibility has deep roots in the historic relationship between violent dispossession and private power, and the legacy of corporate collusion with settler-colonialism and racial segregation. [13]
11. Early charter companies, granted broad State-like powers, gradually evolved into private “limited liability” corporations as intercolonial trade grew vital to European economies. [14] Colonial powers continued to rely on these relationships to outsource, obscure and avoid accountability for the dispossession and enslavement of Indigenous peoples and the expropriation of their resources. [15] Corporations have not only inherited the benefits of this legal veil of separation, but have also emerged as shapers of international law. [16]
12. Today, some corporate conglomerates exceed the GDP of sovereign States. [17] Sometimes wielding more power – political, economic and discursive – than States themselves, corporations enjoy increasing recognition as rights-holders, with still insufficient corresponding obligations. The asymmetry of immense power without sufficiently justiciable accountability exposes a fundamental global governance gap.
13. Corporations and their home States – primarily Global Minority States – continue to exploit structural inequalities rooted in colonial dispossession. [18] Meanwhile, weaker regulatory systems in formerly colonized States, and development and investment imperatives mean corporations often evade accountability. [19]
14. Nevertheless, important precedents exist. The post-Holocaust Industrialists’ Trials laid the groundwork for recognizing the international criminal responsibility of corporate executives for participation in international crimes. [20] By addressing corporate complicity in apartheid, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission helped shape corporate responsibility for human rights violations. 21] Increasing domestic and international litigation signal a growing trend toward corporate accountability. [22]
15. The case of Palestine further tests international standards.
16. Today, the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights set out the normative framework for States’ and corporate entities’ compliance with international law. [23] States have the primary obligation to prevent, investigate, 3 punish and remedy human rights abuses by third parties, and may breach their obligations if they fail to do so. The Guiding Principles crystallize the human rights standards applicable to corporate conduct which apply regardless of whether states uphold their primary obligations. International humanitarian law and criminal law also confer specific obligations and liabilities on private actors, [24] with domestic jurisdictions primarily responsible for enforcement.
17. The Guiding Principles establish a continuum of responsibilities, depending on whether corporate entities cause, contribute to or are directly linked with adverse human rights impacts. [25] In conflicts, businesses must observe heightened human rights due diligence to identify concerns and adjust their conduct. [26] The liability of corporate entities will be determined by their actions and by human rights impact: due diligence is not sufficient to absolve corporations of liability.[27] At a minimum, corporate entities directly linked to human rights impacts must exercise leverage or consider termination of their activities or relationships. Failure to act accordingly may give rise to liability. Where violations constitute crimes, corporate executives and, increasingly, entities themselves, may be held accountable for their knowledge and material contributions to crimes. [28]
18. In the occupied Palestinian territory, building on decades of documented human rights violations and crimes, recent judicial developments leave no room for doubt that corporate engagement with any component of the occupation is connected with violations of jus cogens norms and international crimes. [29] Citing racial segregation and apartheid, violations of the right to self-determination and the prohibition on the use of force, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) unequivocally affirmed the illegality of Israel’s presence including military, colonies, infrastructure and resource control. [30] Furthermore, the atrocities committed since October 2023 triggered proceedings for genocide before the ICJ, and for war crimes and crimes against humanity before the ICC. The ICJ has ordered Israel to stop creating life-destroying conditions, and, in Nicaragua v Germany, reminded States of their international obligations to avoid transferring arms that might be used to violate international conventions. [31]
19. These decisions place on corporate entities a prima facie responsibility to not engage and/or to withdraw totally and unconditionally from any associated dealings, and to ensure that any engagement with Palestinians enables their self-determination.
20. Where corporate entities continue their activities and relationships with Israel – with its economy, military, public and private sectors connected to the occupied Palestinian territory – they may be found to have knowingly contributed to: violation of the Palestinian right to self-determination; annexation of Palestinian territory, maintenance of an unlawful occupation and therefore the crime of aggression and associated human rights violations; crimes of apartheid and genocide, and other ancillary crimes and violations.
21. Both criminal and civil laws in various jurisdictions can be invoked to hold corporate entities or their executives accountable for violations of human rights and/or crimes under international law.
IV. From the economy of settler-colonial occupation to the economy of genocide
22. Settler-colonialism involves extraction and profit from, and colonization of, land through the expulsion of its owners. 32] In Palestine, historically, companies have driven and enabled the process of displacement-replacement of the Arab population, foundational to the logic of settler-colonial erasure. [33] The Jewish National Fund, a land-purchasing corporate entity founded in 1901, helped plan and carry out the gradual removal of Arab Palestinians, which intensified with the Nakba [34] and has continued ever since. [35]
23. Increasingly aided by corporate entities, Israel has pursued Palestinian dispossession and displacement, especially after 1967. [36] The corporate sector has materially contributed to this endeavour by providing Israel with the weapons and machinery required to destroy homes, schools, hospitals, places of leisure and worship, livelihoods and productive assets such as olive groves and orchards, to segregate and control communities and restrict access to natural resources. [37] By helping to militarize and incentivize illegal Israeli presence in the occupied Palestinian territory, they have contributed to the creation of the conditions for Palestinian ethnic cleansing. [38]
24. Corporate entities have played a key role in stifling the Palestinian economy,[39] sustaining Israeli expansion in occupied land while facilitating the replacement of Palestinians. Draconian restrictions – on trade and investment, tree planting, fishing and water for colonies – have debilitated agriculture and industry, [40] and turned the occupied Palestinian territory into a captive market;[41] companies have profiteered by exploiting Palestinian labour and resources, degrading and diverting natural resources, building and powering colonies and selling and marketing derived goods and services in Israel, the occupied Palestinian territory and globally. [42]
The 1993 Oslo Accords entrenched this exploitation, de facto institutionalizing Israel’s monopoly over 61 per cent of the resource-rich West Bank (Area C). [43] Israel gains from this exploitation, while it costs the Palestinian economy at least 35 per cent of its GDP. [44]
25. Financial and academic institutions have also enabled the conditions for Palestinian displacement-replacement. Banks, asset management firms, pension funds and insurers have channelled finance into the illegal occupation. Universities – centres of intellectual growth and power – have sustained the political ideology underpinning the colonization of Palestinian land, [45] developed weaponry and overlooked or even endorsed systemic violence, [46] while global research collaborations have obscured Palestinian erasure behind a veil of academic neutrality.
26. After October 2023, long-standing systems of control, exploitation and dispossession metamorphosed into economic, technological and political infrastructures mobilized to inflict mass violence and immense destruction. [47] Entities, that previously enabled and profited from Palestinian elimination and erasure within the economy of occupation, instead of disengaging are now involved in the economy of genocide.
27. The following sections illustrate how eight key sectors, operating separately and interdependently through the core pillars of the settler-colonial economy of displacement-replacement, have adapted to its genocidal practices.
A. Displacement
28. Post-October 2023, weapons and military technologies used to advance Palestinian expulsion have become tools for mass killing and destruction, rendering Gaza and parts of the West Bank uninhabitable. Surveillance and incarceration technologies, ordinarily used to enforce segregation/apartheid, have evolved into tools for indiscriminate targeting of the Palestinian population. Heavy machinery previously used for house demolitions, infrastructure destruction and resource seizure in the West Bank have been repurposed to obliterate Gaza’s urban landscape, preventing displaced populations from returning and reconstituting as a community.
Military sector: the business of elimination
29. Militarized violence created the State of Israel and remains the engine of its settler-colonial project. [48] Israeli and international weapons manufacturers have developed increasingly effective systems to drive Palestinians off their land. By collaborating and competing, they have refined technologies that enable Israel to intensify oppression, repression and destruction. 49]
30. Prolonged occupation and repeated military campaigns have provided testing grounds for cutting-edge military capabilities: air defence platforms, drones, AI-powered targeting tools and even the US-led F-35 programme. These technologies are then marketed as “battle-proven”. [50]
31. The military-industrial complex has become the economic backbone of the State. [51] Between 2020 and 2024, Israel was the eighth largest arms exporter worldwide. [52] The two most prominent Israeli weapons companies – Elbit Systems, established as a public-private partnership and later privatized, and state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) – are among the top 50 arms manufacturers globally. [53] Since 2023, Elbit has cooperated closely on Israeli military operations, embedding key staff in the Ministry of Defense, [54] and was awarded the 2024 Israeli Defense Prize. [55] Elbit and IAI provide a critical domestic supply of weaponry, [56] and reinforce Israel’s military alliances through arms exports and joint development of military technology. [57]
32. International partnerships providing weaponry and technical support have enhanced Israel’s capacity to perpetuate apartheid and, recently, to sustain its assault on Gaza. Israel benefits from the largest-ever defence procurement programme – for the F-35 fighter jet, [58] led by US-based Lockheed Martin alongside at least 1600 other companies including Italian manufacturer Leonardo S.p.A, [60] and eight States. Components and parts constructed globally contribute to the Israeli F-35 fleet that Israel customizes and maintains in partnership with Lockheed Martin and domestic companies. [61]
Israel was the first to fly the F-35 in combat in 2018, and then to use it in “beast mode” by 2025. [62] Lockheed Martin F-35 and F-16 fighter jets, pivotal to the Israeli air force,[63] have significant carrying and fire capacity, including the 2000lb GBU-31 JDAM bombs and, for F-35s, over 18,000lb of bombs at a time. [64, Post-October 2023, F-35s and F-16s have been integral to equipping Israel with the unprecedented aerial power to drop an estimated 85,000 tons of bombs, [65] kill and injure more than 179,411 Palestinians [66] and obliterate Gaza.,[67]
33. Drones, hexacopters and quadcopters have also been omnipresent killing machines in the skies of Gaza. [68] Drones largely developed and supplied by Elbit Systems and IAI have long flown alongside these fighter jets, surveilling Palestinians and delivering target intelligence. [69] In the last two decades, with support from these companies and with institutions like Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), [70] Israel’s drones acquired automated weapons systems and the ability to fly in swarm formation. [71]
34. To supply Israel with these weapons and facilitate arms export and import transactions, manufacturers depend on a web of intermediaries, including legal, auditing and consulting firms, as well as arms dealers, agents and brokers. [72] Suppliers like Japanese FANUC Corporation provide robotic machinery for weapons production lines, including for IAI, Elbit Systems and Lockheed Martin. [73] Shipping companies such as Danish A.P. Moller – Maersk A/S transport components, parts, weapons and raw materials, sustaining a steady flow of US-supplied military equipment Post-October 2023. [74]
35. For Israeli companies like Elbit and IAI, the ongoing genocide has been a profitable venture. The 65 per cent surge in Israel’s military spending from 2023 to 2024 – amounting to $46.5 billion, [75] one of the highest per capita worldwide. 2024, the Court ordered Israel to “immediately halt” military operations that may bring about conditions of life intended to destroy. [433] In separate proceedings, Nicaragua v Germany, the ICJ reminded all States “of thei international obligations relating to the transfer of arms [434] parties to an armed conflict, in order to avoid the risk that such arms might be used to violate” international law.[435]
42. By placing States on explicit notice of this risk of genocide, the ICJ orders engaged the obligation under Article 1 of the Genocide Convention to “prevent and punish” genocide, thereby exposing all those who continue to aid, abet or assist Israel in committing such acts to potential international responsibility for complicity in genocide.
43. In November 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants in the Situation in the State of Palestine for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, on the basis that there are reasonable grounds to believe that they bear criminal responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
3.4. Consequences for corporate entities
44. The above legal developments have significantly reshaped the assessment of corporate responsibility and potential liability, which must now be interpreted in light of these orders and decisions of international courts.
45. The scale and severity of violations occurring throughout Israel’s decades-long military occupation – which has helped entrench a settler-colonial apartheid regime – should already have alerted corporate actors to their responsibility to avoid causing, contributing to or being directly linked to ongoing human rights violations, and the possibility that they may have been complicit in the commission of international crimes, such as by aiding and abetting and facilitating them. The political economy of Israel’s occupation set out in the report, is illustrative of the entwinement of all manner of corporate activities with the displacement and replacement of Palestinians in the oPt.
At a minimum, this directly linked these corporate activities with an entrenched and structural set of violations that almost certainly already triggered the responsibility of corporate entities to cease engagement linked to the oPt under the UNGPs, on the basis of their limited capacity to wield influence in order to prevent or mitigate the adverse impact. But the recent and ongoing ICJ and ICC proceedings have removed any possible doubt and put corporate entities – whether subsidiaries, parent companies or direct actors and investors – clearly on notice of the serious risk of being implicated in very serious violations of international law, including human rights violations and international crimes, and of their actions having contributed to or become criminally complicit in these violations and crimes.
46. Israel’s ongoing illegal occupation of the oPt creates an untenable situation for corporate entities to simply continue business as usual. The finding that the occupation is per se illegal, and that international crimes, including genocide, and arguably the crime of aggression, may have been committed, has gone far beyond a “heightened risk” of adverse human rights impact. The private sector must, in its own interests, urgently reconsider all engagement connected to Israel’s economy of occupation and now genocide.
47. A consequence of the ICJ Advisory Opinion is a requirement for heightened human rights due diligence on the part of corporate entities, which must now address the fundamental illegality at the heart of Israel’s enterprise. They can no longer limit their legal assessments and mitigation measures to questions of Israel’s specific conduct and whether certain human rights (e.g., environmental, workers’ or children’s rights or lack of fair trial guarantees) and humanitarian frameworks are respected. [436] For example, the incarceration of thousands of Palestinians, whether in administrative detention or after being convicted in military courts, is unlawful due to the lack of legal authority and because it is part of a governance system using mass incarceration of Palestinians as a tool of systemic repression and forced displacement, and not merely due to the absence of fair trial guarantees.
The Advisory Opinion also signals that corporate entities must recognize the primacy of the right to self-determination and its interpretive function in the construction of all other human rights protections. [437] This means Human Rights Policies and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) frameworks cannot continue to overlook the right to self-determination, which is firmly embedded within human rights law, [438] recognized as a foundational right of all peoples, and the prerequisite to all other rights. [439]
48. It also means recognizing that any engagement with Palestinians and in the oPt must comply with their right to self-determination. This supersedes paternalistic justifications based on the fiduciary obligations of the occupying power under the Fourth Geneva Convention, and invalidates specious justifications by corporate entities, such as that an investment through Israel as the occupier can eventually benefit the Palestinians as well, or that divestment would have adverse human rights impacts. [440]
49. The ICJ Advisory Opinion, endorsed by the UN General Assembly, imposes a prima facie responsibility on corporate entities to not engage and/or to withdraw totally and unconditionally from any dealings with any component of the occupation. Where corporate entities disregard this notice, fail to abide by their responsibilities under the UNGPs and continue engagement through their activities and relationships with Israel, its economy, its military and private sector connected to the oPt, they knowingly contribute to or cause violations, including the denial of the Palestinian right to self-determination, the permanent annexation of Palestinian territory or the maintenance of Israel’s unlawful occupation of Palestinian territory.
50. Worse, this is a political economy that was always eliminatory and has now turned into genocidal mode. Confirming this, the ICJ Provisional Measures and ICC Arrest Warrants signal the risk that corporate entities – and their executives – that engage in the oPt are implicated in serious international crimes. Any decision to continue engagement in Israel’s economy is therefore done with knowledge of the crimes that may be taking place, and of the fact that they may provide material support to Israel to continue to commit those crimes.
51. Corporate entities and their executives can, and indeed must, find themselves liable in civil or criminal law for such conduct, in addition to the multitude of other crimes and human rights violations that are part of the economy of occupation. The actions entities and executives do or do not take in accordance with their responsibilities, vis-a-vis these legal developments and the UNGPs, have material relevance to key evidential questions that would arise in the course of determining their civil and/or criminal liability.
* The present report was submitted to the conference services for processing after the deadline so as to include the most recent information.
