Palestine campaigners target Coca-Cola and Israeli fresh produce

This week, Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) launched a major new campaign: Don’t Buy Apartheid. The campaign calls on all individuals, as well as shops, restaurants, cafés, and venues, to take two key actions in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for freedom: boycott Israeli produce, and boycott Coca-Cola.

The campaign highlights how both Israeli agricultural companies and Coca-Cola work to uphold and enable Israel’s system of oppression against Palestinians.

Israeli agriculture boycott

Who Profits? research found that Israeli agricultural export companies, which supply the leading retail chains in the UK, operate farms, packing houses and other facilities in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. This makes the companies participants in the colonisation of Palestinian land and theft of resources, and they benefit from the Israeli state’s systematic attempts to destroy and dismantle Palestinian agriculture.

Trading with these export companies provides economic support for their role in supporting Israel’s colonisation and military occupation, with revenue contributing to the sustainability of illegal settlements. For this reason, Palestine Solidarity Campaign believes all fresh produce from Israel must be subject to boycott. 

When out shopping for fresh produce, check the label. If it says ‘product of Israel’, or bears the name of an Israeli agricultural exporter such as Mehadrin or Hadiklaim, don’t buy it. 

While Israeli fresh produce is being exported worldwide, Palestinian agriculture is under attack.

In the Gaza Strip, Israel’s genocide has devastated Palestinian agriculture, with analysis by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN and the UN Satellite Centre showing that 75% of cropland has been damaged or destroyed, decimating local food production.

In the West Bank, Palestinian farmers face an intensification of attempts to drive them from their land by the Israeli military, working in coordination with armed Israeli settlers. These attacks ramp up during the annual olive harvest. Not only are hundreds of thousands of Palestinians reliant on the harvest for their subsistence, but the trees, grown and tended to across several generations, are central to Palestinian life, with communities working together to harvest the crop in the face of extreme harassment and violence.

Israel’s attacks on Palestinian agriculture are not limited to the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Palestinian Bedouin communities in the Naqab region are continuing to face down attempts to drive them from their land, including through the destruction of wheat and barley crops and the theft of livestock.

Coca-Cola boycott

Coca-Cola also enables Israel’s crimes against Palestinians. The corporation’s exclusive franchisee in Israel, The Central Bottling Company, owns a regional distribution centre and cooling house in an illegal Israeli industrial settlement in occupied East Jerusalem. Established in 1970, the Atarot Settlement Industrial Zone is constructed on the stolen land of Palestinian villages. The settlement forms part of Israel’s project to alter the demographic balance of the city by ethnically cleansing Palestinians, fragmenting and isolating their remaining communities, while expanding its colonial settlements. 

The BDS National Committee also points out that through operating business-as-usual in the region, Coca-Cola is contributing to the Israeli state through taxes. 

The proliferation of apartheid-free alternatives, such as the Palestinian-owned Gaza Cola, which donates profits to rebuilding hospitals in Gaza, demonstrates that Coca-Cola is easily replaceable for individuals and businesses alike.
 

The responsibility to take action falls to us

Last year, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip is unlawful. It also discussed racial segregation and apartheid, describing an “institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination of one racial group over another”. In its judgement, the court made clear that all states are obliged not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

In the absence of any action from the British government to end its complicity in Israel’s crimes, that responsibility falls to us.

Over the past 17 months millions of people bearing witness to the unprecedented crimes Israel has committed in its genocide in Gaza have joined the Palestine solidarity demonstrations that have swept every town and city in Britain. As Palestinians continue to resist Israel’s attacks, including its continued siege on Gaza, and its daily military invasions in the West Bank, and face the real prospect of Donald Trump enabling Israel to carry out a further crime of historic proportions – the ethnic cleansing of the entire population of Gaza – it’s more urgent than ever we step up our campaigning. 

PSC’s Palestinian partners are clear about the task of the solidarity movement in Britain: we must work to end the state, corporate and institutional complicity that helps uphold Israel’s regime of oppression.

Many are already participating in boycotts of companies enabling Israeli apartheid. By having a laser focus that’s easy to communicate, we can maximise the pressure on complicit companies and increase our impact. By following a collective strategy, we can ensure that our boycott actions are creating real economic consequences for corporations that enable Israeli apartheid.