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Airbnb’s impact on Judea-Samaria

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The guesthouse, advertised as “Tranquility of the Valley,” boasts a hot tub, a patio that faces west toward the setting sun, and picturesque views of farmland and hills. It’s available at $134 per night on Airbnb. For now.

That will change soon as this rental listing, along with some 200 others, will be removed from Airbnb, the short-term apartment rental website. After two years of protests by pro-Palestinian activists, the company announced last week that it will take down all listings in Israeli-owned homes in Judea and Samaria.

But Moriya Shapira, who owns the guesthouse in Shiloh, isn’t too worried about money. While she knows she will lose business, Shapira hopes to make it up by advertising on other websites and networks popular with Israeli tourists looking for a getaway.

What concerns her is the ideological blow that she says settlers like her have suffered at the hands of a tech company with lofty ideals.

“When we registered to Airbnb, they wrote ‘it’s a community of all the world, everyone hosts each other, everyone loves each other,’” Shapira told JTA. “And suddenly they’re saying ‘no, you cannot host, you are not part of it.’”

Airbnb’s decision will impact the modest business of settlement tourism, but stakeholders across the ideological spectrum cast the debate mostly in ideological terms. For the movement seeking to end Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, and for those who want to boycott settlements or Israel as a whole, the decision is a significant victory. For the Israeli government and other supporters of settlements, it’s a call to arms.

“We found that the settlement enterprise involves severe violations of human rights,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director for Human Rights Watch, which has been asking Airbnb to remove the settlement listings since 2016. “There’s no way a business can operate in a settlement without contributing to serious human rights abuse.”

When protests began in 2016, Airbnb did not take action. But along with Human Rights Watch, a campaign under the name Airbnb: Say No to Stolen Homes pushed Airbnb to remove the settlement listings through public protests and a petition delivered to its offices in San Francisco.

“We would come out, and we have video of them very graciously taking the petition in San Francisco,” said Granate Kim, communications director for Jewish Voice for Peace, a left-wing group that backs the BDS movement.

The statement Airbnb released names a few concerns with the listings, including that critics say “companies should not profit on lands where people have been displaced” and that listings in settlements may be “contributing to existing human suffering.”

“We concluded that we should remove listings in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank that are at the core of the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians,” the statement said. “Our hope is that someday sooner rather than later, a framework is put in place where the entire global community is aligned so there will be a resolution to this historic conflict and a clear path forward for everybody to follow.”

An Airbnb spokesperson did not respond to follow-up questions by JTA.

The Israeli government has protested the move, with Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan calling for a boycott of Airbnb in response.

“There are enough competitors, we do not need them,” Erdan said.

Israel advocates have also criticized Airbnb for singling out Israel amid a world of conflicts and allegations of human rights abuses.

“Airbnb has not de-listed rentals in any other disputed areas,” Jonathan Greenblatt, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, wrote in an open letter to Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky. “Yet only Israeli settlements are being singled out for de-listing by Airbnb, a decision which many see as a double standard set by your company.”

Before this week, Airbnb appeared to have a positive relationship with Israel and its supporters. In 2015, Tel Aviv partnered with Airbnb to create an interactive guide to the city, the first such partnership that Airbnb had formed. In 2016, partly due to multiple allegations that Airbnb hosts in Europe refused to rent to Israelis, the company added a non-discrimination clause for hosts.

A report released last week by Human Rights Watch says settlements are uniquely bad because they are illegal under international law (Israel disputes this), some are built on seized Palestinian land, and Palestinians who live in the West Bank are not allowed access to them.

Israelis are regularly prohibited from entering several Middle Eastern countries where Airbnb listings are still accepted. But Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian negotiator, said the comparison is faulty: Palestinians being prohibited from West Bank settlements are not foreigners but live in the same territory.

“It’s the only place in the world where a person who lives somewhere cannot enter based on their ethnicity or national origin,” he said. “If there were another country where those things are found, we’d be all for Airbnb having a similar policy, but we haven’t found that.”

It’s unclear whether this decision will help or hurt Airbnb’s bottom line, said Pam Scholder Ellen, an associate professor of marketing at Georgia State University. Because people hold passionate opinions on both sides of the issue, she said, Airbnb would anger one side and please another whether it kept or removed the listings.

She added that because the international community considers settlements illegal, it’s possible that Airbnb saw them as a liability.

“It is becoming increasingly common for companies to take stances on political issues, particularly since the last election,” Ellen said. “A lot of the companies that are doing this are run by much younger founders and they are more likely to be politically active.”

Tamar Asraf, a spokeswoman for the Binyamin Regional Council, which governs settlements in the central West Bank, said she didn’t think Airbnb’s decision would hurt tourism there. In the days since the statement, Asraf said, she has received messages from people in Israel and abroad who want to visit in order to make a statement.

“We’re already seeing this: People are picking up the phone and saying we want to come,” she said. “Not necessarily people who are naturally supportive of settlements, but they’re very much against boycotts.”