The home-sharing platform Airbnb has announced that it will cancel its ban on listing homes for rent in the Israeli-Palestinian disputed West Bank territory, and donate all of the proceeds made from those rentals to humanitarian aid
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 10th April, 2019) The home-sharing platform Airbnb has announced that it will cancel its ban on listing homes for rent in the Israeli-Palestinian disputed West Bank territory, and donate all of the proceeds made from those rentals to humanitarian aid.
In November, the company announced that it was removing some 200 rental listings in West Bank settlements from its website, causing an uproar from the Israeli community. The pro-Israel Shurat HaDin law center filed a suit against the US company, claiming that the ban was discriminatory against Jewish people. On Monday, Airbnb settled the lawsuit.
"Under the settlement terms, Airbnb will not move forward with implementing the removal of listings in the West Bank from the platform ... we will continue to allow listings throughout all of the West Bank, but Airbnb will take no profits from this activity in the region. Any profits generated for Airbnb by any Airbnb host activity in the entire West Bank will be donated to non-profit organizations dedicated to humanitarian aid that serve people in different parts of the world," the company said in a statement released on Tuesday.
Airbnb also reiterated that it did not support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, of which it had been accused by pro-Israeli supporters, which claimed that Israel was an oppressor of Palestinians and aimed to put pressure on international organizations to boycott Israel and its businesses through sanctions and divestment.
"Airbnb has always opposed the BDS movement. Airbnb has never boycotted Israel, Israeli businesses, or the more than 20,000 Israeli hosts who are active on the Airbnb platform," the statement said.
When Airbnb initially banned the West Bank listings in November, it said that it had made the decision because it did not want to profit off lands where people had been displaced. Similarly, Airbnb has banned listings in Crimea, Iran, Syria and North Korea, due to the international sanctions on those places.
Airbnb is a multibillion Dollar global platform operating in 191 countries and regions and more than 81,000 cities. It has a wide range of social campaigns and community outreach programs. In 2018, the company announced that it would donate $10 million to a handful of charity organizations and in 2017, it raised over $1 million for the UN Refugee Agency.
