Caterpillar Caught in Web Of Middle East Politics

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Caterpillar Caught in Web of Middle East Politics

By Larry Cohler-Esses and Josh Nathan-Kazis

Published July 21, 2010, issue of July 30, 2010.

At first glance, the contention that a construction equipment company in Peoria, Ill., is implicated in

the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems strange. But earlier in July, the largest Presbyteriandenomination in the United States adopted a resolution that strongly criticized Caterpillar Inc., the

manufacturer whose tractors, bulldozers and mining equipment help build and farm America, for its

role in Israel¶s occupation of Palestinian lands.

The resolution, passed at the annual conference of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), called on

Caterpillar to ³carefully review its involvement in obstacles to a just and lasting peace in Israel-

Palestine, and to take affirmative steps to end its complicity in the violation of human rights.´

The Presbyterian action was but the latest development in a multiyear campaign against the company

for supplying Israel with construction equipment used in the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza,

particularly a special militarized bulldozer used to demolish Palestinian homes and other buildings.

In protest of Caterpillar¶s Middle East policies, the Church of England has divested its assets in the

company ² a measure also considered by PC(U.S.A.). Other organizations have engaged it through

shareholder activism at the behest of opponents of the Israeli occupation.

But in a response to the Forward, Caterpillar strongly defended its sales to Israel, saying it could not

monitor how its bulldozers and other machines are used. The company stressed that it does not

militarize the bulldozers, called D9s that are at the heart of the activists¶ charges. That customizing is

done by Israel.

Still, court documents make it clear that Caterpillar has sold its D9s to Israel via an American military

program ² and that the U.S. Defence Department has financed those sales, even as the U.S. State

Department cites Israel¶s use of those same D9s to demolish Palestinian homes as serious human

rights concerns.

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It¶s a convoluted situation, one that allows Caterpillar critics to excoriate the company while Caterpillar

stresses that it is making its sales under a program sponsored by America¶s government.

According to the State Department¶s 2009 human rights report on Israel, between 2000 and 2007,

Israel demolished 1,626 buildings in areas of the West Bank that were under its full control. The report

cites as its source the Israeli NGO Bimkom, which states that it compiled its count from government

data.

As recently as July 19, according to the Israeli daily Haaretz, the Israeli army demolished about 55

structures in the West Bank village of Farasiya, including tents, tin shacks, plastic and straw huts, clay

ovens, sheep pens and bathrooms. These structures served the 120 farmers, hired workers and their

wives and children who lived in the Jordan Valley village.



Israel has defended the demolitions as actions taken within the context of Israeli law. Many

demolished homes, particularly in East Jerusalem, lack proper building permits, though the State

Department reports that Israeli laws and procedures make such permits difficult for Palestinians to

obtain. Homes of suicide bombers are also demolished, although that practice has been suspended in

recent years. And the army sometimes demolishes homes after declaring the land on which they sit to

be part of a live-fire zone, as occurred in Farasiya.

Palestinians generally receive no compensation for the demolition of homes lacking proper planning

permission, the State Department reports, though in some cases the families living in them had been

residents since the 1950s. In some instances, it said, the families were required to pay the cost of the

demolition.

No data were available detailing Caterpillar¶s total sales of D9s and other equipment to Israel over the

years. But according to documents submitted by the U.S. government in a federal court case, sales to

Israel totaled $32.7 million for a single transaction of 50 D9 bulldozers in 2001.

Caterpillar¶s D9¶s have been employed routinely in Gaza and at times in the West Bank. Other

Caterpillar machines are frequently among those used in West Bank and East Jerusalem demolitions,

the construction of Jewish settlements and the erection of Israel¶s controversial barrier separating

Palestinians from Israel and many of its West Bank settlements. But it is not possible to ascertain the

role of Caterpillar machines, if any, in each West Bank operation.

³Are they [Caterpillar] responsible for what the Israeli government is doing? Of course not,´ said David

J. Vogel, a professor of business ethics at the Haas School of Business at the University of California,

Berkeley. ³The connection is very tenuous. On the other hand, they¶re a convenient target«. In some

ways, their responsibility is beside the point. On some level it¶s about politics.´

Tom Borelli, the director of the Free Enterprise Project at The National Center for Public Policy

Research, dismissed Caterpillar¶s critics. ³A lot of activists have for years recognized the media

attention they can get by attacking a corporation at a shareholder meeting and by generating

headlines, but they¶re no more responsible for the way their bulldozers are used [than] General

Motors is responsible for a car. It¶s just activism run amok.´

The campaign against Caterpillar first gained steam six years ago. In a November 2004 release,

Human Rights Watch called for Caterpillar to end the sale of D9 bulldozers to the Israeli army. A

report released by Amnesty International earlier that year made similar recommendations. According

to HRW, the IDF used D9 bulldozers to destroy more than 250 Palestinian homes that year in Rafah,

a city in Gaza near the border with Egypt. The IDF said at the time that some of the homes hid

tunnels used for smuggling goods across the Egyptian border.

But the connection between Caterpillar and the IDF¶s D9 bulldozers used in some of those

demolitions is complex and, Caterpillar argues, indirect.

The stock version of the D9 is between 14 and 15 feet wide and 13 feet high, according toCaterpillar¶s website. On one end is a bulldozer blade; on the other is a tool known as a ³ripper,´ to

break up hard materials.

According to a report in Haaretz, the version of the D9 used by the Israeli army is fitted with a heavy

machine gun and a bulletproof cabin, among other military modifications. But the only modifications

Caterpillar itself makes for Israel are nonmilitary in nature, a spokesman told the Forward, such as

adding attachments that allow the machines to be towed and an extra port for jump-starting it.



Nevertheless, in a filing in a 2006 court case brought against Caterpillar by families of civilians killed

by IDF Caterpillar bulldozers, the U.S. government affirmed that the ³equipment in question´ ² that is,

Caterpillar¶s D9 bulldozers ² had been purchased by the Israeli military with American funds

procured under the Defence Department¶s Foreign Military Financing program.

Caterpillar declined to disclose whether it had made any more recent sales to Israel. And a Defence

Department spokesman was unable to clarify whether the United States was funding any currentpurchases. The Israeli Embassy and Israel¶s defence ministry did not respond to requests for

comment by press time.

Meanwhile, those opposing the demolitions have broadened their protests beyond the D9, which was

used most heavily in Gaza. Home demolitions in East Jerusalem and often in the West Bank, they

point out, are not carried out by militarized D9s but are sometimes accomplished using other

Caterpillar equipment.

³Caterpillar is connected to everything that is connected to the land,´ said Sydney Levy, director of

campaigns for Jewish Voice for Peace, which has been active in the opposition to Caterpillar. ³It¶s

connected to home demolition, it¶s connected to building the wall, to building settlements.´ Levy¶s

reference to the wall referred to the separation barrier Israel is building in the West Bank that at points

cuts deeply into the occupied territory and separates villagers from their farms.

In a statement sent to the Forward, the company strongly defended its sales to Israel.

³Understandably, Caterpillar cannot monitor the use of every piece of its equipment around the world,´

the statement said. ³However, we recognize the responsibility companies have to encourage the

constructive use of their products. To that end, we do not condone the illegal or immoral use of any

Caterpillar equipment, and consistent with Caterpillar¶s Worldwide Code of Conduct, we expect our

customers to use our products in [ways] consistent with human rights and the requirements of

international humanitarian law.´

Asked how those expectations square with Israel¶s use of Caterpillar bulldozers for purposes cited by

the State Department as human rights problems, the company, in a follow-up statement, stressed:³The Caterpillar products used by the Israeli government are sold as part of a U.S.-Government

sponsored program. It is best for governments to work to resolve issues such as the long-standing

dispute in the Middle East, rather than having companies like Caterpillar become involved in trying to

resolve such matters.´

Peter Rosenblum, a professor of human rights law at Columbia University Law School, doubted this

would satisfy the concerns of Caterpillar¶s critics.

³As long as [a product] is not inherently dangerous the issue would typically end there,´ he said, but

added: ³At the point you become the sole supplier, the known supplier, the company counted on for

that purpose « in what is one of the ugliest stories in occupation ² legal arguments aren¶t going to

get them out of the problem.´

*Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected] and follow him on

Twitter @joshnathankazis. Contact Larry Cohler-Esses at [email protected] *

Reporter Sam Petulla contributed to this report.



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@

oshe of A ockville· 2 weeks ago

B

C

)Israel's position on the D editerranean with access to vital international shipping and military traffic

is cr itically impor tant to the secur ity of the E

S,as exemplified by its being a por t of call f or our

troops,ships,aircraft and intelligence operations.B

F

)The E

S's special relationship with Israel provides

Amer ica with real time access to one of the best intel services in the wor ld.The E

S receives

invaluable inf ormation about al Qaeda, G ezbollah,G amas and Iran,among others, concerning anti-US

and terror ist organizations and regimes.H onsider ,also, the cost in US blood and hundreds of billions

of dollars if Israel did not destroy the nuclear reactor in I

sirak(1981) and in Syr ia(2007).

P epor t

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Q

ehudah Ben-Israel· 2 weeks ago

"Palestinian lands"R

S

eally? T here are those lands?

Palestine as an independent state has never existed, never!

The Arabs of the U

and didn't ref er to themselves as "Palestinians" bef ore the late 1960s! Indeed, as

late as 1964, when the Arab U

eague set up the Palestine U

iberation V rganization (PU

V ) it didn't ref er to the organization as one set out to liberate the "Palestinians" but to liberate "Palestine", three f ull

years bef ore Israel captured the disputed terr itor ies dur ing the def ensive W une 1967 Six-Day T ar .

X rom the Arab

U

eague's perspective Israel, being par tof Y Palestine", was to be "liberated", eliminated

really!

And here a W ewish newspaper ref ers to the "Palestinian lands" as if Israel's very existence should be

ceased as the nation-state of the W ewish people is situated, based on the perception of the ̀

uslim-



Arab wor ld on "Palestinian lands".

Do the wr iter and editors of the a orward read what they wr ite? Do they understand the meaning of the

terminology that they use so lightly? Is being politically correct more impor tant f or the journalists of the

a orward than being caref ul journalists?

I am disappointed!

b epor t

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plid e

· f g tiv h 1 w h h k f g i

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p

il Troy· 2 weeks ago

Yea sure q ehuda! r

o such thing as Palestine or Palestininians!

s as it notp

olda(thief )Meir who shamef acedly said the same thing as you are blur ting!

You know something such assinine comments proves you zionists have no case! You have bought

out the US t ongress and we are seeing the result! USA is a bankrupted country now!

u epor t

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v


Ms. w olda Meir 's statement at the time represented reality: There had been Muslim-Arabs residing in

the x

and, of course, but they didn't identif y themselves as "Palestinians" at that time. They simply

perceived themselves as members of the Arab umma (nation) par t of whose identity was Islam.

Indeed, the UN Secur ity y

ouncil � esolution 242 that was the most impor tant UN resolution in trying to

resolve the conflict between the Muslim-Arabs, local and regional, with the nation-state of the � ewish

people, Israel, didn't mention even once concepts such as "Palestinian state" or "Palestinians", not

once, and this resolution not only passed unanimously at the Secur ity y

ouncil but was also accepted

by all the Muslim-Arab relevant par ties to the Arab Israeli conflict. This resolution was passed and

accepted at about the same time Ms. w olda Meir made her statement.

Indeed, the demand f or a "Palestinian state" came only in the late 1980s, after all attempts to wipe

Israel off the f ace of ear th in f ull scale wars f ailed and the strategy developed was to achieve the

same goal by stages; setting up a "Palestinian state" was to be one such stages.

And finally, the "Palestinian lands" ref erred to, i.e. � est Bank, eastern � erualem, w aza, were

"cleansed" of all their � ewish inhabitants dur ing Israel's

� ar of Independence and were under total



Muslim-Arab control between the years 1948 and 1967. Yet, eastern � erusalem was not declared a

capital city, in f act it was a neglected little town, and the disputed terr itor ies, the "Palestinian lands"

were not declared a "Palestinian state"!!

� ne should of course wonder , why...??!!

� epor t

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Edna· 2 weeks ago

Excellent points, � ehudah.�

e are expected to think, talk and wr ite on the basis of political

correctness in cer tain circles yet reality flies in thef ace of political correct terminology that are being

shoved down our throats. Posts like yours help us view reality as it is and not as some, mostly the

Arabs, want us to see it. Yishar koach!

� epor t

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David· 2 weeks ago

Say what you will about us Zionists (he means �

ews gang, but doesn't have the nerve to say it) but

please enlighten us if you will about the history of Arab Palestine. � or example, when was it f ounded?

� ho was the first president/pr ime minster or even king of Arab Palestine? � hat was the capital of

Arab Palestine and who built it? �

hen was the first Arab Palestinian coin first minted? �

hat were the first boundar ies of Arab Palestine?

I await your answers, � il.

� epor t

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TheAZ � owBoy· 1 week ago

The usual pathetic 'excuse f or committing state terror ism' on a people that lived in Samar ia and � udea

dur ing the dayze when the � ews were living inKahzar ia in the Black sea/� acasus areas while

plannining their assualt on the � ussian � zar , Ukraine, Poland, � ermany and finally Spain - where the

� ueen (tired of seeing Spainairds being '� ewed' by the Kahzars) finally despatched the who bunch of

arrogant incorr igibles to Nor th Af r ica to spread their 'conman' misery and 'money changing usuary'

sciences on their newest victims - the Nor th Af r icans!



TheAZ owBoy

Tombstone, AZ.

epor t

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Danna· 1 week ago

Do you, sir , der ive much pleasure by spewing your anti-Semitic venom r ight here, at this liberal

ewish site? e don't, and the editors of this site are to blind to see how they are being used by the

scum of ear th like you!

epor t

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abbi Tony j

utner · 2 weeks ago

I too am dismayed not only by the use of k aterpillar beyond the 1967 lines but anywhere in occupied

Palestine, including l aff a, Akko, Saf ed, and Al Quds

m epor t

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aving noticed your posts in the past, Sir " abbi", I have a strong f eeling you are dismayed by the

very f act that the nation-state of the

ewish people exists. Indeed, what is your f eeling about the

existence of the

ewish people, Sir ...??

epor t

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P.S. Do the names "Troy" and "Tony" belong to a one and the same person...??

z epor t

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{


The two nation-state solution / By Ar i Shavit

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not about the occupation. If it were about the occupation, it would

have erupted in 1967 and not in 1920. If it were a conflict over the occupation, it would have ended in

2000 and not continued to this day. If it were about the occupation, it would be easy to terminate it by

means of a f ull Israeli withdrawal and f ull Palestinian recognition of Israel after the withdrawal.

| owever , withdrawal is not being implemented and recognition is not being given because the conflict

is not about the occupation.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is three-tiered: It is a conflict about 1967, about 1947 and about 1917.

| owever , what under lies this is the f act that the {

ewish national movement did not recognize the

Palestinian people or its r ights to this land, and that the Palestinian national movement did not

recognize the {

ewish people and its r ights to the same land.

It f ollows that peace will not be achieved without Israeli recognition of the Palestinian people and the

Palestinian nation-state, and without Palestinian recognition of the {

ewish people and the {

ewish

nation-state. The only way to peace is by means of true mutual recognition.

In } slo 1993,~

amp David 2000 and Annapolis 2008, Israel went a long way toward this necessary

mutual recognition. At first it recognized the Palestinian people, then agreed to the establishment of a

Palestinian state and finally accepted almost f ull withdrawal and the par tition of {

erusalem. Israel thus

shattered taboo after taboo and shed ref usal after ref usal. | owever , in no case - neither at }

slo,~

amp David or Annapolis - did the Palestinians go a parallel distance. They shattered no taboo and

shed no f undamental ref usal. To this day they do not recognize the

{

ewish people, its r ights or its nation-state.

The best illustration of the Palestinian ref usal was provided last year . In the summer of 2008, Israel's

pr ime minister , Ehud } lmer t,made Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) an

unprecedented peace proposal: Israel would retain only 6. percent of the est Bank (the settlement

blocs) and in return the Palestinians would receivef ull terr itor ial compensation in the Mount | ebron

area, in the Beit She'an Valley and in the {

udean |

ills.{

erusalem would be divided on a demographic

basis, with the holy basin to be entrusted to a special international regime. | owever , Abu Mazen did

not accept } lmer t's end-of -occupation off er . | e rejected out of hand the pr inciple of dividing the

country into two nation-states.

(to be continued in next post...)

epor t

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�


(...continuation f rom previous post)

The impor t of this is clear : a double asymmetry exists between Israel and the Palestinians. � n the

one hand, Israel is the occupier and the Palestinians are the occupied. But on the other hand, Israel

recognizes the r ight of existence of the Palestinian people's state, whereas the Palestinians do not

recognize the r ight of existence of the �

ewish people's state.

To try to acheive peace, it is essential to address the two asymmetr ies concurrently. To demand that

Israel act f or the establishment of a Palestinian state and to demand that the Palestinians recognize

the �

ewish state.

Tzipi

ivni grasped the whole problem and also suggested a solution: replace the hollow f ormula of

the two-state solution with the f ormula of two nation-states. No, the Palestinians need not recognize

the �

ewish state in advance. But as long as they do not recognize the �

ewish state, there is no reason

f or Israel to recognize the Palestinian state.

� ne possibility is f or the negotiations to be conducted with no pr ior conditions. The second possibility

is f or the negotiations to be conducted between two par ties that are committed to the solution of two

nation-states living side by side in peace and secur ity. � ne way or the other , but the third possibility is

completely unacceptable.

It is out of the uestion f or Israel to recognize the Palestinian people's r ight of self -determination in

advance, while the Palestinians ref use to recognize the �

ewish people's r ight of self -determination.

That asymmetry will not lead to peace; sooner or later , it will lead to a blood-drenched all-out war .

Benjamin Netanyahu is now trying to implement

ivni's meta-pr inciple. Expectedly, the left is r idiculing

the attempt. The imagined peace community is trying to sabotage it.

owever , in this specific case Netanyahu is r ight. �

n this issue of pr inciple he is expressing the firm

opinion of the Israeli major ity. If there is a chance f or an Israeli-Palestinian peace, it must be a peace

of two nation-states.

(End)

epor t Reply

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spli t· 2 weeks ago

They dont't want your stinking swiss cheese land, swap they wat you out, per iod -

et out

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Caterpillar Caught in Web Of Middle East Politics