Israel’s Egged bus company has won an 8-year bid to provide bus service for the city of Amsterdam.
The Israeli bus company Egged has won a tender to provide transportation services in Amsterdam
The contract, which includes an optional two-year extension, is said to be worth some €500 million (about $700 million).
“This win is a breakthrough for us, as this is our first chance to provide public transportation services in a Western European country,” said the Egged chairman Gideon Mizrahi.
Egged will begin operating suburban bus lines connecting the cities of Purmerend, Hoorn, Volendam, Eda and Wormerveer to central Amsterdam in December 2011, according to Israel’s Arutz Sheva news. The metro bus line will include some 250 new buses.
The fact that Israel’s largest transportation company won such a large European bid, through its subsidiary Egged Bus Systems, is controversial.
Egged operates bus services for illegal Israeli settlements inside occupied Palestinian territory, and is involved in the Jerusalem Light Rail, a train project that links settlements in East Jerusalem to the western part of the city.
By facilitating population transfer into occupied Palestinian territory, Egged is actively and knowingly complicit with Israeli violations of international law.
Egged also operates some 1,400 buses in Poland where it owns the Polish bus company Mobilis, including exclusive franchises in Warsaw, Krakow and Bydgoszcz.
Egged’s privatisation of the Polish company has not been so popular. Since the take over, workers’ wages, working conditions and hours have all been dramatically reduced.
The Polish Campaign of Solidarity with Palestine already launched a campaign against Egged-Mobilis for its joint complicity in Israeli violations of international law.
In 2004 the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that the construction of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory violates international law as laid out in Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which forbids population transfer into occupied territory.
Egged profits from these violations of international law.
The ICJ ruling also stated that all states are under an obligation not to “render assistance in maintaining the situation created by such construction”.
“By providing Egged, an agent of Israeli occupation, with contracts, the Polish state is bringing into question whether it is undermining international law,” according to PCSP.
The Polish Campaign of Solidarity with Palestine calls upon the local municipalities inPoland to end their support for Israel’s illegal occupation but cutting all ties with Egged and refusing to grant the company further contracts.
It is time for the solidarity community in Amsterdam to do the same.
