New Delhi: A new report submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council has alleged that a large number of global corporations have played key role in facilitating or benefiting from Israel’s occupation and military operations in Gaza and West Bank that violate international law, and called for accountability of the private sector.

The report, authored by Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, alleges that corporate entities across multiple sectors have enabled “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”.

While previous reports have focused on illegal settlements or Israel’s political actions, this report, based on over 200 submissions and a new database of around 1,000 corporate entities, is the first to link global business networks with the architecture of what Albanese alleges are international crimes, including apartheid and genocide.

Titled 'From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide,' the 39-page report identified 48 corporate entities who have been involved economic activity in Palestinian territories, “wilfully ignoring documented, systemic abuses, even as atrocities mounted after 7 October 2023”.

The Special Rapporteur wrote in the summary that while international governments have failed to act, "far too many corporate entities have profited from the Israeli economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now genocide."

"This complicity is just the tip of the iceberg," she wrote. “The corporate sector, including its executives, must be held to account, as a necessary step towards ending the genocide and disassembling the global system of racialised capitalism that underpins it”.

Arguing that corporate involvement is central to the “Israeli settler-colonial project,” she links commercial interests directly to the displacement and dispossession of Palestinians, particularly since 1967. 

“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 worship and leisure, livelihoods and productive assets such as olive groves and orchards,” the report says. It also accuses companies of helping to militarise and incentivise illegal settlements, thereby enabling conditions conducive to “Palestinian ethnic cleansing.”

Among the firms named are Israeli arms manufacturers Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, along with US-based Lockheed Martin, which produces the F-35 fighter jets used in Gaza. The report states that since October 2023, Israel has dropped more than 85,000 tons of bombs on Gaza, much of it unguided. Albanese characterises the campaign as the “obliteration of Gaza.”

Global giants

The report also points to Japan’s FANUC Corporation for supplying robotic machinery used in weapons production, and Denmark’s A.P. Moller-Maersk for “sustaining a steady flow of US-supplied military equipment” to Israel during its campaign in Gaza.

“For Israeli companies such as Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, the ongoing genocide has been a profitable venture,” the report stated. “The 65 per cent surge in Israeli military spending from 2023 to 2024 – amounting to $46.5 billion,75 one of the highest per capita worldwide – generated a sharp surge in their annual profits”.

Beyond the arms industry, the report highlights the role of Israeli and global tech companies in enabling a sweeping surveillance regime. Companies such as Microsoft, IBM, Google, Amazon, and Palantir are accused of providing cloud services, AI targeting platforms, and biometric systems that support the occupation.

“The repression of Palestinians has become progressively automated,” the report notes, with tech firms profiting from what Albanese calls a “unique testing ground for military technology” in the occupied territories.

Palantir Technologies, co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel, is named for supplying AI-driven targeting systems that allegedly facilitated automated decision-making during airstrikes. Albanese states there are “reasonable grounds to believe” that Palantir provided predictive policing tools and military software infrastructure, as well as its Artificial Intelligence Platform, which enables real-time integration of battlefield data.

The report also details the use of heavy machinery provided by multinational firms in demolitions and forced displacement efforts. It names Caterpillar, HD Hyundai, and Volvo for supplying equipment allegedly used to destroy Palestinian property. “Since October 2023, this machinery has been integral to damaging and destroying 70 per cent of structures and 81 per cent of cropland in Gaza,” it said.

Academic institutions and financial actors are also implicated. The report accuses Israeli universities of developing weapons technologies and promoting ideological narratives that support apartheid and occupation.

“In Israel, universities – particularly law schools, archaeology and Middle Eastern studies departments – contribute to the ideological scaffolding of apartheid,” the report says, alleging they erase Palestinian history and legitimise colonial practices.

Growth from war

Albanese also highlights Western universities for their links to Israeli institutions and military research. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for instance, several labs are said to conduct research for the Israeli Ministry of Defense, described as the only foreign military funder of such work at MIT. These include projects on drone swarm control, pursuit algorithms, and underwater surveillance.

The report states that many corporate entities have seen “unprecedented growth” since October 2023 due to increasing settlement activity, accusing them of powering and profiting from conditions “calculated to destroy the Palestinian population,” including the near-total cutoff of water, electricity, and fuel.

The report noted that recent legal developments, notably the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion, had “significantly reshaped the assessment of corporate responsibility and potential liability”.

“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”.

In January 2024, the ICJ ordered Israel to take “all measures” to prevent genocidal acts against Palestinians. Five months later, it also called on Israel to immediately halt its military operations.

Among its recommendations, the report called on member states to “enforce accountability, ensuring that corporate entities face legal consequences for their involvement in serious violations of international law”.

It demanded that global corporates should “promptly cease all business activities and terminate relationships directly linked with, contributing to and causing human rights violations and international crimes against the Palestinian people, in accordance with international corporate responsibilities and the law of self-determination”.

Israel's response

Israel has rejected the report outright. According to the BBC, the Israeli government dismissed it as “groundless, defamatory and a flagrant abuse of office.” Israel has denied the allegations of genocide, and stated that it was acting in self-defence against Hamas which had been behind the October 7, 2023 terror attack.

Two days before the report was released, the United States demanded that the UN Secretary-General António Guterres should “condemn her [Albanese’s] activities and call for her removal”. “The United States warned that continued failure to do so would not only discredit the United Nations but would also require significant actions in response to Ms. Albanese’s misconduct,” said the July 1 statement of the US permanent mission to the UN.

According to UN-focussed news outlet PassBlue, the UN secretary genral’s spokesperson reiterated that Guterres has “has neither the authority to hire them nor does he have the authority to fire them. So, while they do have a UN logo and UN title in their name, they work fully independently of the Secretary-General. He has no idea what they’re going to do, where they are or what they say,” 

Both Israel and the United States withdrew from the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council earlier this year, following the return of the Trump administration for a second term. The US had previously left the Council during Trump’s first term.

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