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14 palestine NEWS COMMENT & ANALYSISSpring 2012Olympic security firmprofits from OccupationBy Diana NeslenThe red, black and white logo of the giant multinationalcompany G4S is becoming ever more familiar, emblazonedas it is across the country’s secure facilities, local authoritytransport systems and even on our ambulances. The tunics ofparamedics advertise the company’s role as “working in partnershipwith the NHS.”Now it is set to become even more well-known as it is thecompany which will be running all the security and cash servicesoutlets for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.For Palestinians, however, G4S is one more in the catalogue ofcompanies which profit from the occupation of their land and arecomplicit in violations of international law.According to Who Profits? the Israeli investigative project runby the Coalition of Women for Peace, G4S began to profit from themisery of Palestinians living under occupation since it purchased theIsraeli security company, Hashmira, in 2002.G4S, a joint British-Danish company, is one of the world’s largestinternational security corporations and has taken over many ofthe functions of governments in numerous countries, particularlyin the field of welfare to work, immigration controls, prisons andtransportation.Who Profits? says that G4S involvement in Israel and theOccupied Territories can be summarised thus:1. G4S provides security equipment and services toincarceration facilities holding Palestinian political prisonersinside Israel and in the occupied West Bank.2. It offers security services to businesses in settlements.3. It has provided equipment and maintenance services toIsraeli military checkpoints in the West Bank. It declares thatit will withdraw from these contracts but Who Profits? has nocredible evidence that it is doing so.4. It continues to provide security systems for the Israelipolice headquarters in the West Bank.In response to increasing concerns raised about its activitieswithin the OPTs, G4S stated that it would terminate contracts toprovide services to the military checkpoints in the West Bank butwould continue to provide services to settlements. It also statedthat it would withdraw from some of the services it provides to theprisons. However Who Profits? discovered that it will only withdrawfrom one, thus far nameless, prison and that will only happen in2015.The second thing that G4S did was to obtain an opinion from aDanish professor of international law, Hjalte Rasmussen, who foundthat the company’s activities were compliant with internationallaw. However, that opinion has been contradicted by legal opinionobtained by British G4S campaigners and endorsed by ProfessorJohn Dugard, chair in public international law at Leiden University inthe Netherlands, who found that indeed G4S is complicit in Israel’sviolation of the Geneva Convention with respect to Palestinianprisoners.Under Article 76(1) prisoners from the OPTs should be detainedwithin that territory and not outside it. Most prisoners are detainedwithin Israel. By providing services to the prisons where theyG4S chief executive, Nick Bucklesare held, G4S is assisting in grave breaches of the 4th GenevaConvention.The issue of Palestinian prisoners has slowly risen up theagenda. Israel does not distinguish between political prisoners andthose it regards as guilty of crimes against the Israeli state but treatsall Palestinian prisoners as “security” prisoners.Once this label is attached to the prisoner, whatever thenature of their “crime”, they are treated with the same brutality.This encompasses vicious arrest, denial of legal advice, solitaryconfinement, torture, illegal interrogation methods and on occasion,Administrative Detention without trial or the ability to challenge thesecret evidence used against them.Walid Daka, a Palestinian citizen of Israel serving a life sentencefor alleged involvement in the kidnapping and murder of an Israelisoldier, talks in the book Threat, by Anat Matar and Abeer Baker, ofthe control systems operated by technologies of the kind suppliedby international corporations like G4S. These mean that camerasare everywhere, doors and locks are controlled electronically andone warden can control 120 prisoners, leaving them alone in a worldwithout human contact.G4S supplies services to Ofer prison in the Seam Zone whereterrified children are brought in shackles to the military court. Thesechildren are often kept in Al Jalame (Kisharon) prison where abuse iscommon place.Having lost the argument about illegality, G4S is now tryingdesperately to use the same defence as Veolia, namely that all thecompanies allied to it operate separately. However this is for publicrelations consumption only, as a cursory glance at their web siteshows exactly how interlinked all their operations are.This is how they present themselves: “G4S has the internationalreach and resources to meet the security needs of the global age.We operate in more than 125 countries and have more than 635,000employees worldwide. Whether you require a security solution inone location or across multiple continents, our global experience isalways on hand to bring you advantages.”We in the Group4campaign contend that they cannot have it bothways. We believe that the fact that they are trying to pull the woolover people’s eyes tells us that they are beginning to realise thatthey are in a hole. So we have everything to gain in bringing their
Spring 2012 COMMENT & ANALYSISpalestine NEWS 15behaviour to public attention and campaigning against awarding ofcontracts to them.While G4S may eventually stop supplying services to the Walland checkpoints and may limit its activities to providing securityservices to shopping facilities in the illegal settlements, as longas it maintains its commitments to the prison service in Israel it isguilty of complicity in gross violations of the Geneva Conventionand could, in theory, stand trial in countries that accept evidence ofcorporate complicity in violations of the Geneva convention.On 17 April, <strong>Palestine</strong> Prisoners’ Day, Palestinian civil societyand human rights organisations called for a campaign to targetcorporations profiting directly from the Israeli prison system, inparticular “for action to be taken to hold to account G4S... whichhelps to maintain and profit from Israel’s prison system, for itscomplicity with Israeli violations of international law.”On the same day it was announced that G4S had lost thecontract to supply security services to the European Community.Many organisations throughout Europe had lobbied against therenewal of this contract.It is beyond belief that in the UK this company is being garlandedwith praise for its contribution to the Olympics, embraced as apartner for our beleaguered Health Service and chosen as thepreferred partner in the privatisation of the prisons and criminaljustice system. In addition it has won contracts to providesocial housing across the country with its latest one coveringthe Midlands, East of England, North West and Yorkshire andHumberside, worth a staggering £203 million.Surely our public services should be more selective about thecompany they keep and we as a society should be campaigningagainst the granting of any contracts to G4S in light of their actionsin Israel and occupied <strong>Palestine</strong>.• Diana Neslen works with the Group4campaign. Email:Group4campaign@gmail.com. A blog for all the organisationsworking to target G4S is at: http://notog4s.blogspot.co.uk• For the full Who Profits? report on G4S, see www.whoprofits.org/g4s_reportSocial media has impactAn article analysing how social media brought global attentionto the Palestinian hunger strikers and to a new website calledLove Under Apartheid that examines the impact of Israelioccupation on Palestinian intimate and family relationshipswas posted in March on Electronic Intifada.Written by Abraham Greenhouse, a solidarity and BDS activistbased in New York, the article explores just why the campaignswere effective – a question that is vitally important for activistswho want to harness the global power of social media on behalf ofdemanding justice for the Palestinians.Activist Tanya Keilani organised Love Under Apartheid (http://loveunderapartheid.com) after learning of the occupation-relatedproblems a Palestinian friend was having in planning her wedding.“I was really upset that her future was so uncertain; love is hardenough to navigate without such policies,” she said.The website, launched on the eve of Valentine’s Day, includesmoving videos of lovers and married couples describing theirproblems under Israeli restrictions. Tanya looked at what socialmedia channels were best for the campaign. “Twitter andFacebook were obvious choices but it was really useful to releasea promotional video that was entertaining, well made, and easilyaccessible to multiple audiences, and to host the video on a sitenormally untouched by political campaigns (FunnyOrDie).”The campaign for the hunger strikers, beginning with KhaderAnan, was less centralised but also had clear goals. Firstly it wasto increase the visibility of the strike within the social media sphere,then to encourage mainstream media to report on the story. Readthe full article at http://tinyurl.com/bu666cv.Lana and Taiseer on Love Under Apartheid.• Palestinian Christians and the Israeli Ambassador tothe USThe Israeli Ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, madethe absurd claim on the CBS programme, 60 minutes, on22 April that Palestinian Christians were leaving the WestBank due to Muslim extremism, not Israel’s occupation. TheInstitute for Middle East Understanding collected responsesfrom Palestinian Christians: http://tinyurl.com/d9aw7xv.• Truth told on Israeli “Big Brother”The truth about what Israelis doing to the Palestiniansfound a brilliantly eloquentand forceful champion inthe figure of 27-year-oldTel Aviv-based artist, SaarSzekely, in the unlikelyforum of the Israeli versionof Big Brother.Szekely debated withhis co-stars saying things like: “Israel doesn’t want peace.It wants land” and “Israel is on the brink of catastrophe andyour eyes are closed.” Such views are rarely aired in Israelbut the show had its highest ever ratings as 40% of IsraeliTVs were tuned in. http://tinyurl.com/br76nl7• Land Day DemosAt least one person was killed by the IDF and 130 injuredin big demonstrations marking Palestinian Land Day. Inaddition, people from 82 countries took part in actions infront of their embassies in the Global March to Jerusalem.There’s a good report on RT: http://tinyurl.com/cg2xa7n.• Life in a refugee campIn a new UNRWA documentary, Someone Like Me, a youngLebanese man visits Burj Barajneh Camp. The 24-minutefilm offers a rare glimpse of life inside a Palestinian refugeecamp in Lebanon. http://tinyurl.com/cyev96t• Excess baggage in the OPTsIf you missed the BBC Radio 4 travel programme, hosted byJohn McCarthy, on travelling in the OPTs, catch it again at:http://tinyurl.com/7pu72lg.
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