On the threshold of Israeli Apartheid Week 2011, please consider that the company Winnipeg City Hall endorses as the new mender of our crumbling wastewater system is also supporting illegal settlements in east Jerusalem. Another good reason not to deal with Veolia!
“Veolia, a large French multinational, is helping to build and operate a tramway linking illegal settlements in East Jerusalem with Israel. Not only do the settlements contravene article 49 of the 4th Geneva Convention forbidding an occupier transferring its own civilians into the territory it occupies, but in most cases the establishment of the Israeli settlements involved war crimes too.
The tramway tightens Israel’s hold on occupied East Jerusalem, ties the settlements more firmly into Israel and undermines chances of a just peace for the Palestinian people.
Veolia also operates bus services for Israeli settlers, running them between the illegal settlements and Israel. The buses travel on settler roads, which have decimated Palestinian towns and villages by stealing their land for construction, and cut them off from each other. Palestinians were, until recently, forbidden from using these settler-only apartheid roads.
Through its subsidiary, TMM, Veolia also collects refuse from illegal settlements at the Tovlan landfill site in the occupied Jordan Valley.”
…read more at Boycott Israeli Goods (link currently unavailable)