ABU DHABI, 4th February, 2018 (WAM) -- The government of Israel is one that rules without moral conviction or legitimate jurisdiction over the people and territory it has stolen and now occupied across Palestine, said the Gulf News.

In an editorial on Sunday, the paper went on to say that since 1948 and its inception, Israel has treated all Palestinians with contempt at best, jailing generations of Palestinians for daring to resist the illegal and immoral occupation of their lands, and bringing the might of their military to bear with frightening regularity on a largely unarmed population.

"And in occupied Jerusalem, Israel has consistently and deliberately encroached on Palestinian lands, claiming, re-zoning and building on areas of East Jerusalem in the face of concerted international and Palestinians opposition," it added.

"The rate of Israeli colonisation in East Jerusalem in particular has increased and shows no let up as long as the right-wing rabble and rabbis in the cabinet of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hold sway. But the work of Palestinian activists and that of the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions, BDS, movement has proven to be a well-placed thorn in the sides of those businesses and companies who are prepared to sell out their morals for Israeli shekels. Their methodology and logic is simple - if you do business with the occupation administration, you won't do it elsewhere. And it's an effective message.

"Now, the United Nations human rights office has identified 206 companies that are involved in doing business in Israeli colonies in the West Bank, where it said violations against Palestinians are 'pervasive and devastating'. For the companies, being named in the UN database essentially makes them fair game - and rightly so - for targeting by the BDS campaigners," the English language daily continued.

"The majority of the 206 businesses are based in Israel and the colonies. Apart from these 143, 22 more are located in the United States, and the remaining are spread across 19 other countries, the UN says. All of these blacklisted companies have been involved in construction work in the illegal colonies, providing building materials, arranging and organising financing for the new colonists, providing transport links, been involved in the provision of surveillance equipment, and generally profiting from the occupation administration's seizure and development of Palestinian land and turning it into new colonies.

"But as well as naming the 206 companies, the UN went on to cite the harmful restrictions on freedom of religion, movement, education as well as access to land, water and livelihoods caused by Israel's illegal colonisation policies. Now named, these 206 companies need to be shamed. They must not be allowed to carry on business as usual," the Dubai-based daily concluded.

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