The UN human rights commissioner, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, has sent letters to an estimated 150 international and Israeli businesses warning them that they may be included in a UN database of companies involved with illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The letters have been sent as part of the legal verification and clarification process to give businesses identified as working in settlements the right of reply before the database is published in December.
Reports that the high commissioner’s office was pushing ahead with its work to publish the database by the end of this year, despite the strong opposition of the Trump administration and Israel, emerged in August.
It gained new impetus with a claim in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that about 150 letters had been sent in the past fortnight, including a number that had been passed on to Israeli officials.