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MOTOROLA
Global brand that profits
from Israeli apartheid
Information on MOTOROLA
Motorola Israel is a full subsidiary of the giant electronics and telecommunication corporation Motorola Inc.
In 2005, the company won a tender of the Israeli Ministry of Defense, to provide virtual fences to Israeli settlements which refused to fence themselves. According to news reports, a Motorola radar detectors’ system has been installed in some 20-47 Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, including in Hebron, Karmei Tzur and Bracha. In some cases, the radar stations were erected on private Palestinian land, preventing Palestinian movement near the Israeli settlements.
The system’s name is MotoEagle Surveillance, it includes radars and cameras to detect human movement outside the settlements, and it is based on radars provided by the US- Canadian ICx Radar Systems.
According to recent reports, the system is currently installed in about 25 settlements, including Thko’a, Nokdim, Otniel, Beit Hagai, Eli, Rehelim, Tapu’ach, Mechora, Elon More, Talmon.
The system is also used in the Separation Wall complex, in the wall around Gaza, and in military bases. The company provides continuous service to these systems and continues to offer them for use in Israeli installations in the occupied territories.
The company has developed and provided the “Mountain Rose” communication system for the Israeli army, which is a specifically designed mobile system for field conditions, and it is being used by soldiers in the occupied West Bank.
A subsidiary of Motorola, MIRS, is the Israeli army’s cellular services provider, and it has an extensive infrastructure network erected in West Bank army bases and Israeli settlements. The company is in the process of selling MIRS.
The Government Electronics Department (GED) of the company, which was responsible for military technologies in Motorola Israel and produced electronic bomb fuses for the Israeli Army, was sold to Aeronautics Defense Systems in April 2009.
(from “Who Profits‘)
General information on the illegal Israeli settlements and settlement products
Since the 1967 military occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights, Israel has built in these occupied territories civilian colonies, or settlements, and encouraged Israeli citizens and industries to move into them. Presently there are 135 Israeli settlements in the occupied territories and dozens of additional “outposts” – settlements not yet officially recognized by the Israeli government. These house over 562,000 Jewish Israeli residents: 282,000 in the West Bank (excluding Jerusalem), 260,000 in neighborhoods built in Arab Jerusalem or annexed to Jerusalem, and 20,000 in the Golan Heights.
The Israeli civilian construction has been one of the methods in which occupied areas were effectively annexed, partially or in full, into Israel. The on-going construction includes housing developments as well as extensive infrastructure projects such as roads and water systems for the exclusive use of Israeli settlers, on lands confiscated from Palestinians or declared “state lands” in various ways. The Israeli colonizing efforts are illegal by international law that stipulates that an occupying power moving its citizens into an occupied area is in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and any permanent changes made in the occupied land for such settlers is in violation of The Hague Regulations.
Israeli industrial zones within the occupied territories hold hundreds of companies, ranging from small businesses serving the local Israeli settlers to large factories which export their products worldwide. Several settlements, especially in the Jordan Valley and the Golan Heights, produce agricultural goods, such as fruits and flowers, and sell them in Israel and abroad.
Settlement production benefits from low rents, special tax incentives, lax enforcement of environmental and labor protection laws and other governmental supports. Palestinians employed in these industrial zones work under severe restrictions of movement or organization, and with hardly no governmental protections, this many times results in exploitative employment practices and labor rights violations.
The origin of exported settlement products is often intentionally obscured. Companies hold marketing addresses within Israel, or market their products under a label which mixes their products with products from within Israel.