Global trade union urges French banking group to stop financing firms linked to Israeli settlements
The UNI Global Union federation has sent a letter to the French banking group BNP Paribas’s chief executive Jean-Laurent Bonnafe, expressing concern about the bank’s “financial support to the illegal Israeli settlements” in the occupied West Bank.
In the letter, seen by the AFP news agency, the trade union federation that represents 20 million workers globally urged the bank to “take decisive action … to end any identified or suspected complicity in human rights violations and international crimes against the Palestinian people”.
Last month, BNP Paribas was cited in the international aid agency Oxfam’s Trading with Settlements report as one of the “top three creditors to the settlement-linked corporations”, alongside HSBC and Barclays. The report claimed the French bank provided $28bn in loans and underwriting services to settlement-linked companies between January 2021 and August 2024.
“We call on the bank to carry out rigorous due diligence on its ties to the West Bank and take all necessary steps to stop financing activities that violate human rights and drive the dispossession of Palestinian people,” UNI general secretary Christy Hoffman said in a statement.
The trade union federation called on the bank to implement heightened human rights due diligence, publish the results, and use its leverage to pressure the companies concerned to end their activities in the West Bank.
Palestinians injured in Israeli attacks across occupied West Bank
With all eyes on whether Israel will halt its attacks on Gaza, Israeli military and settler violence has continued in several parts of the West Bank.
Here’s a quick roundup of what’s happened in the last few hours, as reported by the Palestinian news agency Wafa:
- Two Palestinians, including a child, were injured after Israeli forces opened fire during a raid in Yabad, a town south of Jenin, in the northern West Bank.
- Israeli soldiers fired live ammunition during a raid in the centre of Hebron, in the south of the West Bank, including three Palestinian children between the ages of 14 and 16.
- Israeli settlers attacked an elderly Palestinian man, 75-year-old Odeh Ali Odeh Ghazal, as he was returning from his land near the village of Kisan, east of Bethlehem.
Israeli military and settler violence has surged in the West Bank in the shadow of the Gaza war, forcing tens of thousands of Palestinians to flee their homes.
US lawmaker says will continue work to ‘block the bombs’
Democratic Congresswoman Delia Ramirez has welcomed the ceasefire deal, saying she hopes it will “bring the hostages and prisoners home and end the bombing and starvation of the Palestinian people”.
“We must save Palestinian lives and pursue an end to US complicity in Israel’s war crimes, atrocities, and genocide,” she wrote on X.
“I will continue to work to Block the Bombs, as we pursue a future of self-determination for the Palestinian people and a just and lasting peace for all residents of the region.”
Since Israel’s war on Gaza began, the US has provided its top ally with billions of dollars in military assistance as well as staunch diplomatic support.
