Last month Egged Bus Systems (EBS) a subsidiary of Egged Israel Transport Cooperative Society Israel’s largest public transportation operator lost a bid for a decade-long contract to run public transportation in the North-Holland region of the Netherlands which includes the country’s capital Amsterdam according to the International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC).
This contract was valued at 19.1 million Euros a year with a total worth of 190.1 million Euros.
Egged Bus Systems lost this lucrative bid after Dutch BDS activists launched a campaign charging its Israeli parent company with facilitating grave violations of Palestinian human rights and international humanitarian law.
Specifically Egged Cooperative operates Jewish-only buses to and between almost all of Israel’s illegal settlement outposts built on stolen Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank and Occupied Jerusalem.
According to IMEMC the company supports and profits from a racist segregated bus system that actively facilitates the maintenance and expansion of Israel’s illegal settlements which are themselves considered war crimes under international law.
A spokesperson for DocP a coalition of Dutch BDS activists for Palestinian rights said: “We are very happy with this result with the fact that our regional government rejected Egged’s bid to run North-Holland’s public transportation system. People can now step into a bus in Amsterdam without helping pay for Israeli apartheid buses that discriminate against Palestinians. Without helping normalize coming and going from Tel Aviv to illegal Jewish-only settlements built on stolen Palestinian land.”
“There is nothing normal about the daily oppression faced by Palestinians and I’m heartened that our Dutch BDS campaigns are growing in popular support and showing results” added the spokesperson.
Riya Hassan Europe’s campaigns officer for the Palestinian Boycott Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) also said: “Congratulations to all the activists organizations and collectives in the Netherlands who successfully built on their earlier BDS campaigns to exclude from their communities a powerful Israeli transportation company that profits from segregated busing segregated roads and segregated Israeli settlements illegally built on stolen Palestinian land.”
Egged Cooperative has also been accused of putting its Palestinian drivers in harm’s way and not doing enough to protect them from violent Israeli extremists. In 2014 100 Palestinian Egged bus drivers resigned fearing attacks by Israeli settlers and after Palestinian Jerusalem-line bus driver Yusuf Hassan al-Ramouni was found dead and hanged in an Egged bus.
