In August 2019, Israel's finance ministry selected a consortium led by the Basque company Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles (CAF) and the Israeli infrastructure company Shapir to expand the railway network serving Israel’s illegal colonial settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory, known as the Jerusalem Light Rail (JLR).
CAF is operating and expanding the JLR’s “Red Line” and is building the new “Green Line”, providing rolling stock and technical services. Both lines connect illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory with West Jerusalem.
As such, the JLR is collaborating with Israel’s illegal de jure annexation of Palestinian East Jerusalem and facilitating the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements. Settlements, which entail the transfer of Israeli civilians into occupied territory and the forcible displacement of Indigenous Palestinians from the occupied city, constitute a war crime under international law.
WHY IS BDS TARGETING CAF?
Israel can only maintain its regime of settler colonialism and apartheid over the Palestinian people with the support of complicit governments, companies, and institutions. These need to be held accountable for their role in entrenching a decades-old criminal regime of injustice and oppression. Ending all such complicity with Israel’s genocidal regime is more urgent than ever.
Putting pressure on Corporations like CAF plays a key role in this regard. CAF is a publicly traded Spanish company specializing in designing and implementing transit systems and manufacturing railway vehicles, equipment, and buses. CAF provides project and engineering management, including system design, civil engineering, signaling, electrification, electromechanical systems, rolling stock supply, and system operation and maintenance. The CAF Group operates in more than 60 countries worldwide, and has production facilities in the Spanish state, France, the UK, Poland, the United States, Mexico, and Brazil, as well as numerous maintenance centers across five continents. BDS pressure can be applied on CAF in all these locations.
CAF, in consortium with the Israeli company Shapir, has played a central role in the development and operation of the Jerusalem Light Rail (JLR), providing key services without which the project would not have reached its current stage.
Under the J-Net concession contract awarded in 2019, CAF is operating and extending the JLR’s “Red Line” and is building the new “Green Line,” providing vehicles and technical services which include approximately 27 km of new track and dozens of stops, as well as supplying 114 new tram units and refurbishing 46 existing ones. The contract also covers the provision of signalling, energy, and communication systems, as well as the integration of the entire project.
Through its joint venture LAVI Light Rail O&M, in which CAF holds a 50% stake, the company is further responsible for operating both lines for 15 years (extendable to 25) and maintaining them for up to 25 years.
Both lines connect illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory with West Jerusalem.
The Jerusalem Light Rail (JLR) network is a large-scale Israeli transport infrastructure project connecting large illegal settlement blocks in and around occupied East Jerusalem to the center of the city and its western side. It is contingent on the expropriation of Palestinian land and the further territorial fragmentation of the city’s Palestinian neighbourhoods.
By serving and connecting these illegal settlements while deepening Palestinian displacement and fragmentation, CAF reinforces Israel’s regime of apartheid and illegal occupation. Through the Jerusalem Light Rail, Israel entrenches a system in which people living in Jerusalem experience fundamentally different rights and access on discriminatory grounds, further advancing Israel’s settler-colonial apartheid agenda.
Apartheid is a system of institutionalised racial domination maintained through systematic oppression and discrimination. Colonial settlements — to which the Jerusalem Light Rail contributes — are among the most extreme manifestations of apartheid.
Even though the apartheid framework cannot be reduced to the discriminatory placement of stops - and adding more stations in Palestinian areas would not remedy the underlying structural discrimination - the distribution of stations is still indicative of the project’s priorities. Approximately 83% of the Red Line serves illegal Israeli settlements (of 33 stops, only 6 serve Palestinian neighbourhoods). When finalised, 94% of the Green Line will serve illegal settlements (of 33 planned stations, only 2 serve Palestinian neighborhoods). Moreover, the stops located in or near Palestinian neighbourhoods were not planned with the aim of meeting Palestinian mobility needs; rather, they were placed there because these areas are adjacent to, or lie along the routes leading to, illegal settlements.
Carried out through public-private partnerships, the JLR project depends on the participation of Israeli and multinational companies for its implementation, garnering huge profits for the companies involved.
In October 2020, CAF signed an offset agreement with the Israeli Industrial Cooperation Authority of the Ministry of Economy for the mutual procurement of approximately USD 191.6 million from 35 Israeli companies, including hi-tech and cyber companies.
The agreement includes procurement from the Israeli industry, procurement of services from Israeli suppliers, and joint research and development (R&D) activity with Israeli technology companies, all of which are complicit in Israel’s atrocity crimes against Palestinians.
Under Israeli law, foreign companies that win qualifying national tenders from government entities are generally obliged to make purchases or reinvestments in Israel valued at a specified percentage of the total contract amount.
As of 2023, there are upwards of 736,000 Israeli settlers living illegally on occupied Palestinian land. Since October 2023, Israeli occupation forces and violent settlers have escalated patterns of ethnic cleansing and apartheid on the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, while Israel was carrying out the world’s first livestreamed genocide in Gaza. In her October 2024 report, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 considers that “the devastation inflicted on Gaza is now metastasizing to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”
On 19 July 2024, the International Court of Justice found Israel guilty of apartheid against Palestinians and ruled that its military occupation and annexation of Palestinian territory are illegal. This means that all states, local governments, corporations and institutions have a legal obligation to immediately end all forms of complicity that directly or indirectly enable Israel to maintain its illegal military occupation. They must also end complicity in Israel’s brutal genocide in Gaza and the root cause of all this: Israel’s decades-old regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid.
UN human rights experts in their September 2024 statement called on third states to "Impose sanctions, including asset freezes, on Israeli individuals and entities including businesses, corporations and financial institutions,involved in the unlawful occupation and apartheid regime as well as on any foreign or domestic entities and individuals subject to their jurisdiction that supply goods and services that may aid, assist or enable occupation and apartheid.”
Recent international law developments with regards to Israel’s atrocity crimes against Palestinians have made clear that corporations that are implicated in the commission of international crimes connected to Israel’s genocide, unlawful occupation, racial segregation and apartheid regime - within or beyond the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967 - are all complicit and must be held accountable. Direct complicity includes military, logistical, intelligence, financial and infrastructure support. The corporations, as well as their boards of directors and executives, may face criminal liability for this complicity.
Recent developments include:
- In January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found Israel to be plausibly committing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza and orders provisional measures to protect the rights of Palestinians under the Genocide Convention. In November 2024, a UN Special Committee found that Israel’s warfare methods in Gaza to be consistent with genocide, including use of starvation as a weapon of war.
- In July 2024, the ICJ ruled in an Advisory Opinion that Israel’s presence (military occupation and settlements) in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are unlawful and violate the prohibition against apartheid in the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD).
- In September 2024, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution with an overwhelming majority adopting the ICJ Advisory Opinion and calling on States to impose a military embargo and trade sanctions on Israel.
- In November 2024, referencing the ICJ rulings and UNGA resolution, the Arab-Islamic summit called for sanctions against Israel, while the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights (ACHRP) passed in the same year a resolution, the first on Palestine in 24 years, calling on member States to end complicity with Israel, to uphold their responsibility to prevent genocide, and to refrain from aiding or abetting crimes against humanity, including apartheid.
- Several other authoritative bodies including the UN Human Rights Council Commission of Inquiry, UN human rights experts, UN special rapporteur for human rights in the OPT have affirmed the obligation of states and corporations to uphold their responsibility under international law as set by the ICJ rulings.
TAKE ACTION
CAF relies on its image and its contracts with public organisations or institutions, such as universities, as well as private businesses. Effective grassroots campaigning can pressure CAF to end its complicity in violations of Palestinian human rights.
-Demand that CAF withdraw from its participation in Israel’s illegal Jerusalem Light Rail to avoid complicity in human rights violations and significant harm to its reputation and international business.
-Get your organisation or trade union to join the international campaign against CAF. Email us on: [email protected].
-Lobby for an ethical procurement policy at your city council or ethical investment policy at your workplace (companies//universities) to exclude companies involved in war crimes, crimes against humanity, wherever this occurs whether in tender bids or partnerships and for as long as CAF is involved in the construction and extension of the JLR on occupied Palestinian land!
For more information contact: Fiona, BNC Europe co-coordinator - [email protected].
GET INSPIRED BY PARTNERS & LOCAL ACTIONS
Across different regions, our partners have employed time-tested as well as innovative tactics to amplify the impact of the #BoycottAXA Campaign. Here’s how you can take inspiration and apply these strategies locally:
Mobilize in your university campuses or institutions to challenge their contract with CAF
CAF has partnerships with certain universities due to its reputation in the design and construction of transit systems and in the manufacture of railway vehicles, equipment, and buses. Follow the lead taken by the students and academics of the Gipuzkoa campus of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). Their pressure made the vice-rector declare that he would not sign any new agreement with CAF as long as it continues to be involved in the Jerusalem light rail project that serves Israel's illegal settlements in Jerusalem.
Set up a letter/email action:
Several grassroots groups worldwide set up an online email action to contact CAF’s top management and/or their city council to remind them of their legal obligations not to supply/contract services that may aid, assist, or enable occupation and apartheid, as the ICJ ruled in July 2024.
