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| May 18, 2005 | ||||
Should Caterpillar be Held Responsible for Demolitions and Deaths in the Occupied Territories? By Shawna Gamache |
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Images of hulking armored Caterpillar bulldozers razing cement homes as weeping families look on have become synonymous with the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Company officials maintain they cannot be held responsible if their products are used illegally.
Israel justifies usage of Caterpillar bulldozers as part of an ongoing war on terror in an active war zone.
In spite of protests across America decrying Caterpillar Inc.’s sale of bulldozers to the Israeli army, and a pending civil lawsuit, the company’s shareholders overwhelmingly decided in April to continue the practice, seen by human rights groups as aiding Israel in violations of international humanitarian law.
Four Palestinian families whose relatives allegedly suffered death or injury from Caterpillar bulldozers recently were added to a lawsuit filed against the company in a Washington State court by the parents of Rachel Corrie, an American activist killed by a Caterpillar bulldozer driven by an Israel Defense Forces soldier in the southern Gaza town of Rafah.
According to an October Human Rights Watch report, the Caterpillar D9 is the main IDF tool to demolish homes, businesses, and agricultural areas in Gaza and the West Bank. The bulldozer is sold through the U.S. Foreign Military Sales Program with armored plating provided by state-owned Israel Military Industries.
Complicit in War Crimes?
The lawsuit, filed in the Western district of Washington federal court, accuses Illinois-based Caterpillar of complicity in war crimes, aiding and abetting extrajudicial killing, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, wrongful death and negligence.
“Clearly there is evidence that Caterpillar knew or should have known about the misuse of its equipment in the occupied territories by the Israeli military,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch, which has conducted extensive investigations into the demolitions.
In the suit, “war crimes” refers to violations of the fourth Geneva Convention of 1949: Article 27, requiring that civilians be humanely treated; Article 32, protecting civilians from brutality, death or physical suffering; Article 53, which says that there can be no destruction of property unless justified by military necessity; and Article 147, which classes extensive destruction of property as a grave breach of the Convention.
“Grave breaches” are seen as especially serious violations of the law, and signatories to the Geneva Conventions are under a legal obligation to prosecute anyone who is credibly alleged to have committed them.
The class of civilians or “protected persons” under the fourth Convention includes non-nationals such as Rachel Corrie, a 23-year old American student and peace activist with the International Solidarity Movement who was crushed to death in March 2003 while defending a Palestinian home.
In part, the suit charges that “Caterpillar, Inc. has aided and abetted or otherwise been complicit in the Israel Defense Forces in the above-mentioned human rights violations and war crimes by providing the bulldozers used to demolish homes of Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in violation of international law when it knew, or should have known, that such bulldozers were being used to commit human rights abuses.”
Conflicting Accounts of Army Actions
Israeli maintains that Rachel Corrie’s death was accidental -- that she was killed by a concrete slab and not a bulldozer.
“We expressed our deep sorrow to the family on this tragic event and have shared with them the results of the investigation,” said David Seigle, press officer with the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. “The report clearly showed that Rachel Corrie was hit mistakenly by a concrete slab while trying to stop a bulldozer from leveling the ground in an area of armed activities against Israeli authorities in the Rafah war zone. The case is currently pending before an Israeli court.”
In addition to the Corrie’s parents, the suit against Caterpillar includes four Palestinian families, one who lost eight members in a late-night home demolition, and two who couldn’t get disabled family members out of their homes before they were crushed, according to Green.
The lawyer believes the addition of the Palestinian cases to the suit helps to show a systematic destruction of homes and disregard of life by the IDF as well as to suggest that Caterpillar had ignored egregious and sustained misuse of their products. “In terms of holding Caterpillar accountable, I think the pattern of what they did over a three-year period really emphasizes that this wasn’t just a horrible mistake, an isolated occurrence,” says Green. “There can’t be intentional harm to civilians under any circumstances. That’s a violation of the Geneva Convention.” Moreover, adds Green, the allegations against the Israeli army were widely known. “International human rights organizations were documenting human rights violations as early as 1989 and it was getting into the international press not later than 1999,” she says. The Israeli Embassy’s Seigle states that Israel’s policy “is to demolish homes only in the event of a clear military necessity, such as usage of these homes for targeting or firing at Israeli forces.” Israel maintains that terrorist hide among the civilian population. “The vast majority of the terrorist attacks, and there have been over 22,000 in the last four years, have targeted Israeli civilians,” says Seigle. “Over 150 suicide bombings killed over 1,000 Israelis over the last four years, mainly civilians.”
“Some of the home demolitions in the Rafah area, an active war zone, were specifically related to the smuggling tunnels in that area used both for smuggling arms and for attacking Israeli forces,” he added.
According to Whitson of Human Rights Watch, even if some of the homes were used to shield terrorists, or conceal part of an underground tunnel system, the massive effort undertaken by the Israeli army indicates that many homes were destroyed to intimidate or move people unconnected with the conflict in violation of the laws of war.
“You see in the satellite images in the report, the slice-by-slice `salami’ destruction of homes along the Rafah border area where the IDF has widened its buffer zone,” said Whitson. “And the claim that the reason has to do with smuggling tunnels is one that our report pretty effectively debunks.”
Shareholders Back the Company
These issues bubbled to the surface in April during a Caterpillar shareholder meeting. Advocacy groups on both sides had purchased shares in the company so they could vote on a proposal, submitted by an organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace, to suspend sales to Israel.
In the run-up to the shareholders’ vote, organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace and the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation (USCEIO) held protests outside Caterpillar headquarters in Peoria, Ill. Protests also were staged outside of Caterpillar manufacturers and sellers in 20 locations from San Francisco to Buffalo, NY.
“Caterpillar is fully aware that their products are violating human rights laws, and they’ve chosen to do nothing about it,” said Josh Ruebner, a grassroots advocacy organizer with USCEIO, a Washington-based coalition. “Israel is using them as weapons . . . armoring them and putting them into combat situations.”
The Human Rights Watch report cites the use of a blade on the bulldozer's back known as “the ripper” to destroy "more than 50 percent of Rafah's roads” and damage “more than 40 miles of water and sewage pipes.” The report corroborates the allegations of the Palestinian families added to the Corrie case, reporting the deaths of three Palestinians under the blade of the bulldozer during the last two years “because they could not flee their homes in time.”
The shareholder proposal to discontinue sales with Israel failed overwhelmingly, with only three percent voting in favor. However, shareholders with more than $600 billion in combined holdings, including CalPERS, the country’s largest pension fund, sided with the token shareholders in the vote, seen by many human rights groups as a small victory in the cause.
A Debate over Motives
But as human rights activists use Caterpillar’s sales as a wedge issue to expose IDF violations of international humanitarian law, some Jewish groups argue that talk of boycotting Caterpillar is part of an anti-Semitic divestment campaign against Israel.
“We hold that an economic boycott is not legal,” said Juda Engelmayer, a spokesman with the New York-based advocacy group American Jewish Congress who attended the meeting as a token shareholder. “We have been trying to counter what seems to be a growing movement, which began with the Presbyterian Church, to establish a boycott of Israeli companies.”
Engelmayer charges that Israel is being held to an unfair double standard not imposed on other countries. “You can list almost any company and start listing hundreds of products used by so many nations that are being accused of [human rights violations],” he said. “Israel is being targeted unfairly.”
For its part, Caterpillar maintains companies cannot be held responsible for how their products are used. “More than two million Caterpillar machines and engines are at work in virtually every country and region of the world each day,” the company said in a prepared statement. “We have neither the legal right nor the means to police individual use of that equipment.”
Caterpillar’s lawyers, Los Angeles-based Howrey, Simon, Arnold & White LLP, are expected to file a motion to dismiss.
But, according to Green of the Center for Constitutional Rights, there is a legal precedent for arguing that companies have a responsibility to discontinue sales with state-actors known to be engaging in violations of humanitarian law. In the cases of Doe v. Unocal and Roe v. Unocal, a Californian court ruled in 1997 that, for some international acts—in that instance, slavery—both government and non-government actors can be held responsible.
Green also cited the decision against Talisman Energy Inc. in Sudan, which found that when a company knowingly applies “substantial assistance” to a governmental or non-governmental actor committing war crimes, it can be held responsible.
“These cases are also part of the growing awareness that companies cannot be exempt from human rights laws,” the lawyer said. Shawna Gamache is a reporter with Medill News Services in Washington D.C. Related chapters from Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know: Arab-Israeli War
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