Occupation profiteer Veolia excluded from $750 million contract in Kuwait

The Palestinian-led movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) has netted two new victories against Veolia — the multinational Paris-based corporation that is involved in several Israeli projects in Palestine.

The Kuwait City Municipality has heeded Palestinian and BDS appeals and decided to exclude Veolia from a waste management contract with the city that was valued at $750 million.

Like other member countries of the Arab League, Kuwait formally boycotts Israeli companies and Israeli-made goods. But applying that principle to multinational companies complicit in Israel’s occupation of Palestine is inconsistently implemented or enforced.

A press release issued by the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) describes the municipal decision as the “the tip of the BDS iceberg in the Arab world.”

In addition to cutting Veolia out of the waste management contract, the municipality ruled to exclude Veolia from “all future projects” in the city, and specifically invoked its illegal projects on Palestinian land. According to the press release, after the municipality voted to boycott Veolia, the company withdrew its tender for expanding an existing wastewater facility that was worth $1.5 billion.

Several months before the decision, both the BNC and Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, had appealed to Kuwait City’s municipality to cancel its work with Veolia.

Last year, Veolia Transdev, a subsidiary of Veolia Environment, announced that it had stopped operating the Modiin bus lines that connected a cluster of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, which was confirmed by the Israeli-Palestinian corporate watchdog Who Profits. However, the company still operates the Jerusalem light rail that connects the center of Jerusalem with the surrounding settlements and the Tovlan landfill in the Jordan Valley of the West Bank.

In 2010 Veolia Transdev declared it would sell its share of operations in the light rail, but as of February 2014 it had not, according to Who Profits. more

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