Israel's Ethnic Cleansing Proceeds as the Eviction and Demolition of Khan al-Ahmar is Imminent

Like Apartheid South Africa before it, Israel is moving Palestinians into bleak and desolate townships 

Khan al-Ahmar is a Palestinian village located between the Israeli settlements of Ma'ale Adumim, a city of nearly 40,000 settlers which is 4 miles from Jerusalem and Kfar Adumim.  About 200 people live there with a school that is attended by about 150 children in the area. The aim of the eviction is to create a continuous belt of settlements from Jerusalem into the West Bank, at the same time dividing the West Bank in two.

The Jahalin Bedouin of Khan al Amar were expelled from the Negev in 1952 by the Israeli army. They moved the following year to the West Bank. In the late 1970s the villagers found themselves incorporated into lands that were assigned to what became the Maale Adumim settlement. The village is one of the only remaining Palestinian areas within the E1 zone, strategically significant because it connects the north and south of the West Bank.

The village has suffered from continual harassment and attacks by the Israeli army and the settlers. In 2015, solar panels were donated to provide the village with electricity. In July, the Civil Administration confiscated the solar panels, as well as one which had been in the village for several years.[1] Palestinians don’t require electricity under Israel’s colonial regime.

Children in the Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar, West Bank, May 15, 2017.

On the 24 of May Israel’s Supreme Court ruled unanimously that starting from June, the Israeli army could move the village to a different location and carry out the demolition and eviction of the Palestinian village of Khan al-Ahmar.[2] Justices Noam Solberg, Yael Willner and Anat Baron approved expelling the population and razing their homes.

The Court was presided over by Noam Sohlberg, who is himself a resident of an illegal Israeli settlement, Alon Shvut in the Gush Etzion bloc. Sohlberg wrote that the grounds for the decision rejecting a villagers' petition for a stay in the order, was that the residents had unlawfully engaged in building both the school and housing, and that it was not within the court's remit to meddle in the execution of Israeli state laws.

Of course the reason why the buildings are illegal is because Israel’s colonial administration refused to issue permits to Palestinians for such things as schools and housing.  The Supreme Court however was not interested in asking why permits are not granted to Palestinians because that might come perilously close to examining the legitimacy of the Occupation itself. A colonial court such as Israel’s Supreme Court can only concern itself with procedural questions.  Of course Israeli settlements aren’t troubled by such legal niceties since the granting of permits and master plans for their development is taken for granted.

Abu Ali Abu Ghalia at the projects committee for a Jahalin Bedouin neighborhourhood

The villagers have been in their current location since before the settlement of Kfar Adumim was established. Despite this, the state refused to include them in the master plans it prepared for the settlers. Consequently, the buildings that the justices deemed illegal were all built without permits.

Israel’s Supreme Court operates on the basis that the Occupation, which is in conflict with International Law is nonetheless legal under Israeli law.  The role of the Court is to put a legal gloss on the Occupation.  Whenever there is a conflict between Israeli Law and International Law the former prevails.[3] As Hagai El-Ad, Director the Israeli Human Rights NGO B’tselem noted:

school in Khan al Ahmar

For decades, the Supreme Court justices have granted legitimacy to practically any injustice that Israel wishes to cause to the Palestinians: demolishing their homes, administrative arrests, revoking residency rights, seizing land, constraining their movement. Still, it isn’t every day that six of the 15 Supreme Court justices sign off on rulings on the fate of Palestinian subjects that boil down to approving crimes.[4]

David Zonsheine, executive director of B'tselem, explained that Israel had failed to connect the township to water, power and sewerage services, and that the villagers had built without permits because Israeli policy is such that is dissuades Palestinian villagers from even trying to obtain licenses to build, a claim also repeated by Human Rights Watch. The effect of the dismantlement and evictions will be, he added, to bisect the West Bank from north to south. [5]

Thousands of settlers in Kfar Etzion celebrating celebrating 50 years of settlement September 27, 2017. (Gershon Elinson FLASH90)

Solberg wrote: “The question at stake is not whether the path the state plans meets the requirements of the law, but whether carrying out the demolition orders meets the requirements of the law.” The “inarguable point of departure” was that the buildings in question were “illegal.”

Why a school building was illegal was not something that the Court was concerned about. It noted that “the village school doesn’t have a yard that meets standards.” It didn’t even meet “acoustic standards”!   In normal circumstances one might expect that a court of law would order that the owners install sound proofing or build a yard of sufficient size.  However that would be to entirely miss the point. This is Israel and these are Palestinians.  The only solution that the Court was prepared to agree to was to demolish and expel.

The Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar, West Bank, May 15, 2017.

However every cloud has a silver lining.  Even though the Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar is going to be demolished and its inhabitants expelled the Civil Administration (run by the Military) is set to approve the construction of 92 building in Kfar Adumim, a settlement less than a mile away from Khan al-Ahmar.[6]

The plan covers an area of 122 dunams (30 acres) which in turn is part of a larger plan, comprising 322 new homes on 660 dunams, which passed the first stage of its approval process in February 2017. The new neighborhood will be called Nofei Bereishit.

The funds for this development will come from the World Zionist Organization Settlement Division.  The Jewish Labour Movement, which as we all know is terribly concerned about ‘anti-Semitism’, is affiliated to the WZO.[7] So although the JLM is formally a supporter of a 2 States solution, they are affiliated to a body that is responsible for providing funds to build settlements designed to prevent that solution! Such is the hypocrisy of Labour Zionism.

Justice Willner, one of the three judges has a brother and sister who live in Kfar Adumim. Nevertheless, she didn’t offer to recuse herself from hearing the case. Willner, Sohlberg and Baron subsequently rejected a request by attorney, Shlomo Lecker, that she do so.

As Peace Now’s Hagit Ofran observed “They’re destroying Khan al-Ahmar because they didn’t give them building permits, it turns out that the Israeli government has no problem with issuing permits for this land – just not to Palestinians.”

Girls going to school in the Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar,

The state intends to evacuate the residents of Khan al Ahmar to the village of Al Jabel, an area near the Abu Dis garbage dump that the state has allocated for the permanent settlement of the Jahalin Bedouin, refugees from the Negev who have lived in the area since before 1967.  It has already become a slum and the shepherds will have to give up their flocks, with the consequent increase in unemployment. The status of women will also be adversely affected.[8]

The garbage heap, which also serves Ma’aleh Adumim, brings throngs of flies and mice to the neighborhood, conveying the Israeli authorities’ contempt. The sewage holes frequently overflow. This is one of the residents’ main grievances: If they already prepared the land for construction, why didn’t they build a sewage system?

In the late ‘90s, Israel expelled around 150 families from about 10 Bedouin communities, including Salaila’s, to the new site. The Bedouin’s expulsion for a “permanent settlement,” now known as al-Jabal (the mountain), was carried out in three phases. Now the High Court of Justice has let the state expel to that site a fourth wave of Bedouin families from Khan al-Ahmar. It’s locked between the largest garbage dump in the West Bank to the east, and the Al-Eizariya car junkyard to the west. [9]

The settlement of Kfar Adumim

Hamda Salaila spoke passionately about the women’s committee she set up two years ago that meets regularly in a large container that houses old furniture, a modest kitchenette and an old ventilator to alleviate the heat a bit.

Salaila and a few other local women run all the activities, which consist of courses for women, project-management training, and games and tutoring for children. Amir Hass described how three women joined the conversation with Salaila: the twins Amani and Iman Abu Ghalia, 22, and their cousin, Hind Abu Ghalia, 27. “Men are not part of this,” Salaila said, with unconcealed pride.

Still, the four women, all university graduates hoping to continue their studies, refused to have their faces photographed. While assertive and aware of their duty to advance the status of women in their community, they nonetheless partially submit to what Salaila calls “the shame culture,” part of which is their families’ – especially the men’s – objection to having pictures of women published.

Palestinian girls watch TV at their home on May 30, 2018 in Khan al-Ahmar village. MENAHEM KAHANA AFP

A stroll around the neighborhood at midday revealed a strange phenomenon: no women are in sight. Is it the heat? No. Even the four women we talked to in the container wouldn’t join our stroll but went straight to their homes next door.

“We don’t walk on the street just like that,” one of them said. “Once we used to stroll outside the neighborhood a little.”

Bulldozers from the Defense Ministry’s Civil Administration have flattened a few lots, on which the forced evacuees are supposed to build their own houses. The new plots are very near one another, a tight cluster of houses and families alien to the Bedouin’s way of life.

In the semi-urban Jahalin neighborhood there is no room for flocks of sheep. “We buy milk. Imagine that – Bedouin buying milk!” says Hind Abu Ghalia. She has lived in the neighborhood most of her life but feels the absurdity of this reality.

“Today woman have a lot of free time. In the past they took part in the work. Economically, a man couldn’t make it without his wife. Today the woman is only at home with no work opportunities,” Salaila says.

“The man goes out, works in settlements and doesn’t let his wife go out. If she hasn’t studied, she’s even more captive in her own house. Once, when we lived in the encampment, women also met and talked to each other. That custom has been lost.”

Plots leased to the Bedouin at al-Jabal in the West Bank

The women now have electricity, running water, and shelter from nature’s hazards. But deprived of the chance to work for a living, they’ve lost the reason to move around.

“We’re imprisoned at home,” Bedouin women told researchers from the group Bimkom, who last year wrote a report about the expulsion’s negative effect on women at al-Jabal and Arab al-Rashayida southeast of Bethlehem.[10] When there’s no choice but to leave home, they wear a niqab, a face covering that wasn’t customary when they lived in the open. Twenty years after the forced relocation, most of them have suffered damaged self-esteem.

At first the neighborhood got its water from Israel water company Mekorot, allowing for a regular water supply. Then the locals were linked to the Al-Eizariya municipality. Israel limits the water supply to the Palestinians, so in the hot months they don’t have running water every day.

To make a living, some families have split. Some of their members look after the flocks and still live outdoors in tents. Some make a living off jobs in nearby settlements. But according to a member of the neighborhood’s projects committee, Abu Ali Abu Ghalia, unemployment among the men is very high.

 “Some basic conditions must be kept when you move from a life of herding to an urban environment. A water and electricity infrastructure isn’t enough. You have to give the people training to change their profession so we can live in the new conditions. A man can’t turn overnight from a shepherd into a driver or a teacher,” he adds.

The lots there are planned at 300 square meters (3,229 square feet) per family, less than what was allocated for the previous waves of expellees. No pasture land has been allotted.

In its response to Lecker’s petition against the demolition at Khan al-Ahmar, the state said that at the beginning of June it would finish building a school that will replace the ecological school. The new school would accommodate 150 students.

This week Civil Administration employees accompanied by policemen entered Khan al-Ahmar to take measurements.  It would appear that the demolition and evictions are imminent. [11] Ahmad Abu Dahuk, a village resident, told Haaretz that the Civil Administration representatives, accompanied by security personnel, were seen five times at the entrance to the village, on Route 1, which leads to Jericho. The sixth time, he said, on Sunday around noon, they entered the village, walked around the houses, entered the ecological school (the well-known one made of tires, which is also slated for demolition), and counted the flocks of sheep. He said the children who were in the school fled in panic. 

Residents told B’Tselem that a police officer told them they would be evacuated by force and that they would be better off leaving “willingly.”

Abu Dahuk also told Haaretz that “We are afraid to sleep, in case they come at night and destroy our homes, and we are afraid when we wake up, in case they come then to destroy them.”.

Since the High Court paved the way for the demolition last month, police, army and Civil Administration representatives have been coming to the site periodically to survey the area and the houses to determine the best points of entry for the heavy vehicles and bulldozers. This time, however, the surveying raised concerns that the demolition and eviction were imminent. No doubt Sohlberg, Baron and Willner will sleep easily in their beds.

Thus Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians continues apace.  After having concentrated the Bedouin in the new township the next phase will be transfer from the country altogether.

Tony Greenstein

---

[1]           See Khan al-Ahmar, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_al-Ahmar.

[2]           Israel to Demolish Entire West Bank Bedouin Village, Ending Year-long Legal Battle , Amira Hass, Ha’aretz 25.5.18. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-to-demolish-entire-west-bank-bedouin-village-1.6116488

[3]           See Israel's Supreme Court: Liberal bastion or an enforcer of injustice?, Ben White, Middle East Eye, 23.3.18., http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/how-israel-s-supreme-court-reinforces-discriminatory-status-quo-1678693361

[4]           Khan al-Ahmar and Gaza: Two Sides of the Same Legal Coin, Ha’aretz, 5^th June 2018, https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/khan-al-ahmar-and-gaza-two-sides-of-the-same-legal-coin-1.6152008 

[5]           Khan al-Ahmar, http://www.jerusalemania.com/place.php?uid=8e820b6f-7783-11e8-b826-002590574a0e

[6]           Israel to Build 92 New Settlement Homes Near Bedouin Village Slated for Demolition, Amira Hass, Ha’aretz, 30.5.18., https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-to-build-92-homes-in-settlement-near-condemned-bedouin-village-1.6132947 

[7]           About the Jewish Labour Movement, http://www.jlm.org.uk/about 

[8]           Israel’s Solution for Expelled Bedouin: Between the Garbage Dump and Junkyard, Ha’aretz, 11.6.18., Amir Hass, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-israel-s-solution-for-expelled-bedouin-between-garbage-and-junkyard-1.6158225

[9]           Israel to Demolish Entire West Bank Bedouin Village, Ending Year-long Legal Battle, Amira Hass, Ha’aretz 25.6.18., https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-to-demolish-entire-west-bank-bedouin-village-1.6116488

[10]          The effect of forced transfer on Bedouin women, Bimkom, http://bimkom.org/wp-content/uploads/The-effect-of-forced-transfer-on-Bedouin-women-Eng_DESIGN1.pdf

[11]          State Takes Preparatory Steps Ahead of West Bank Bedouin Village’s Demolition, Amira Hass,  https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-state-takes-prepares-for-demolition-of-west-bank-bedouin-village-1.6224740 , Ha’aretz 2.7.18.

Just 0.7% of state land in the West Bank has been allocated to Palestinians, Israel admits

This is an Older Post From 2013 Which Has Been Updated

The share of land for settlers and Palestinians

 Jewish settlements in West Bank have been allocated 38 percent of 1.3 million dunams of Israeli state land

Har Adar settlement

By Chaim Levinson | Mar.28, 2013 | 12:00 PM |
       


Over the past 33 years the Civil Administration has allocated less than one percent of state land in the West Bank to Palestinians, compared to 38 percent to settlers, according to the agency’s own documents submitted to the High Court of Justice.

The West Bank includes 1.3 million dunams (approximately 325,000 acres) of “state land,” most of which is allocated to Jewish settlements.

The declared policy of the previous Netanyahu government was to remove Jewish construction from private Palestinian land in the West Bank and to approve all construction on state lands.

According to the classification of the Civil Administration, a small amount of “state land” was registered with the Jordanian authorities until 1967. But most declared “state land” was declared as such after 1979.

The need for such a declaration emerged in October 1979, when the High Court struck down as unconstitutional the state’s practice of seizing Palestinian land, ostensibly for “military needs” but in practice in order to establish Jewish settlements.

It was after 1979 that the process of the wholesale declaration of territory as state land began. According to the law in the West Bank, any land with continuous agricultural cultivation for at least 10 years becomes the property of the farmer; land under cultivation cannot be seized by the state.

Although the Civil Administration team charged with determining which lands are cultivated is supposed to base their conclusions on testimony and aerial photos, a senior official in the Civil Administration conceded recently in the Ofer Military Court that the decisions are political.

The hearing at which the official was speaking was over the state lands declared with regard to the Hayovel outpost. The latter has been at the heart of a High Court case for over seven years. The state had decided to retroactively authorize Hayovel, but aerial photos clearly show a number of houses and cultivated land, and the road to Hayovel goes through private Palestinian land. The state therefore devised a method of declaring the area between cultivated spots, for example, between trees, as “uncultivated” and thus it could deem it state land. Palestinians claiming ownership of the land petitioned against the decision through the organization Yesh Din and attorney Michael Sfard.

In a court hearing in January an official from the Civil Administration’s oversight unit, Gilad Palmon, told the court: “The official who decides on the declaration [of state land] is at the political level, the defense minister. Another Civil Administration official, Yossi Segal, said: “The political echelon decides the size of the area.”

Three years ago the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Bimkom − Planners for Planning Rights asked the Civil Administration, by dint of the Freedom of Information Law, for figures on the extent of state lands in the West Bank. The Civil Administration refused to provide the information and the organizations asked the court to intervene.

The Civil Administration’s representatives told the court that there are 1.3 million dunams of state land in the West Bank and that it could not provide additional data. Jerusalem District Court Judge Yoram Noam did not accept the response and instructed the agency’s representatives to provide more information.

The Civil Administration subsequently provided the court with the following details: 671,000 dunams of state land is still held by the state. Another 400,000 dunams were allocated to the World Zionist Organization. Most of the Jewish settlements, both residences and agricultural land, are on this land.

Another 103,000 dunams of state land were allocated to mobile communications companies and to local governments, mainly for the construction of public buildings.

Utilities such as the Mekorot water company, the Bezek communications company and the Israel Electric Corporation received 160,000 dunams, 12 percent of the total state land in the West Bank.

Palestinians have received a total of 8,600 dunams (2,150 acres), or 0.7 percent of state land in the West Bank.

The Civil Administration told the court that of this, 6,910 dunams were in the Jenin district, land allocations made a long time ago that are now in areas A and B (under full Palestinian control or Palestinian civilian and Israeli military control, respectively). One dunam was allocated for a stone quarry in the Hebron district; 630 dunams in the Bethlehem district were allocated for Bedouin; 1,000 dunams were allocated in the Jericho district and 10 dunams were allocated in Tul Karm.

Nir Shalev, a researcher for Bimkom, said: “Israel has claimed for years that the settlements are built only on state land, a claim that is repeatedly shown to be inaccurate. The data on allocations to the Palestinians, which the Civil Administration was forced to reveal, show the other side of coin: Israeli policy determines that state lands in the West Bank are for the use of Israelis only − mainly settlers.”

Because state land is essential for the expansion of settlements, a great deal of pressure is exerted to influence the decision of where such lands are declared. Haaretz checked and found that even when the state claims that certain lands are state lands, the process of determining usage beforehand is careless, and land declared as state land also includes private Palestinian land and cultivated land. One example of such carelessness regards the large settlement of Givat Ze’ev, northwest of Jerusalem. Next to the settlement is a home belonging to a Palestinian man, Saadat Sabri, who also cultivated a plot of land nearby.

In 2006, when building began on the separation barrier, bulldozers destroyed his fields. Although aerial photos clearly showed the land was cultivated the state declared the land to be state land in 2010 and joined Sabri’s plot to Givat Ze’ev. Sabri petitioned the High Court against the move.

Researcher Dror Etkes found that land important to the expansion of settlements was declared state lands, including territory near Susya, Tekoa, Ma’aleh Adumim, Kiryat Arba and other Jewish communities.

In the center of Ma’aleh Adumim, for example, is land that aerial photos from the 1970s show as partially under cultivation. Yet in 2005 the entire area was declared state land and is now built on.

“The findings, which are a sampling, prove the claims that Palestinian landowners have been consistently presenting over the past few decades: Under the aegis of the broad declaration of lands as state lands, which includes almost a million dunams, Israel has taken over extensive cultivated areas, which were stolen from their owners through administrative decisions over which public and legal oversight is minimal, because they were supposedly not cultivated.”

The director of Yesh Din, Haim Erlich, said: “Yossi Segal, who is in charge of abandoned property in the West Bank, reveals the painful and ugly fact that we have been aware of for some time: The survey, which is supposed to be professional, has become a political tool.”

The Civil Administration did not respond to numerous requests for comment.

Picket of Brighton's Sodastream Shop Takes Zionists By Surprise

A Xmas Surprise for Sodastream

 

For the past year, Palestine Solidarity Campaign have been mounting a regular weekly picket, accompanied by 'pop' pickets outside the Sodastream shop in Brighton

Cobb's cry for help went unheeded - how touching

Not a shopper in sight

A group of far-Right Zionists, including EDL supporter Simon Cobbs, have attempted to disrupt and stop the picket - but to no good effect.  Their main chants when I'm there are 'traitor - presumably a loyal Jew is a racist Jew according to this 'logic'.

The campaign in Brighton has not only been successful in its own terms but it has sparked a world-wide boycott of Sodastream, a company based on confiscated land on the Mishor Adumim industrial estate between Jerusalem and Maaleh Adumim (an Israeli settlement).  Palestinians, of course work there (a favourite Zionist argument) just as they did in South Africa's gold and diamond mines.  Not out of choice but necessity.

Simon Cobbs, leader of the Zionist contingent, looking non too pleased

However what expense-paid journalists like Simon Keenan of the Argus appear not to have noticed is that anyone who joins a trade union is a ' trouble maker' and instantly fired.

I am pleased to say that during the entire period of our picket, from 5-6 pm, in freezing weather, not a single customer entered the shop and when I went back an hour later the same situation applied.  I'd lost count of people who, when taking our leaflets, said they had heard of our campaign.  Likewise the number of Jewish people who come up to me and say that the actions of Israel are no different from the traditional anti-Jewish racists.

Shop acts as a loss leader - most of the time it is empty

But as the founder of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl wrote in his Diaries (p.6)
‘In Paris ...I achieved a freer attitude towards anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all I recognise the emptiness and futility of trying to ‘combat’ anti-Semitism.’

 Corporate Watch Investigation into Sodastream

Xmas picket of Sodastream

 Sodastream, a carbonated beverage manufacturer is based in the Mishor Adumim settlement industrial zone. Mishor Adumim is an industrial are attached to the residential settlement of Ma'ale Adumim, East of Jerusalem in the Israeli occupied West Bank.

Xmas picket at 'Eco' Stream

Israeli company Soda Club, which owns the Sodastream brandname, has opened a new store called Ecostream on Western Road in Brighton.

Sodastream, a carbonated beverage manufacturer is based in the Mishor Adumim settlement industrial zone. Mishor Adumim is an industrial area attached to the residential settlement of Ma'ale Adumim, East of Jerusalem in the Israeli occupied West Bank.

Corporate Watch contacted Steve Bannatyne, who has been employed by Sodastream to open the store in Brighton.

Bannatyne said that the store was a place where people could buy refillable bottles for Sodastream syrups and detergents and would be branching out into food products too. The store stocks a range of Sodastream products.

The eco-concept store, which is owned on a lease, is Sodastream's only store in the UK. The company chose Brighton because of the strong green movement in the city.

3 prize Zionist fools - man in centre is an admirer of Omar Barghouti - spokesperson for Boycott National Committee

Last month Corporate Watch spoke to a woman who had attended an interview to work at Ecostream but had decided to withdraw her application after she became aware that Sodastream profit from ?from the Israeli occupation and human rights abuses?.

Bannatyne said he had passed the concerns on to the company and they had responded but that he felt he was not qualified to comment on behalf of the business?

The expansion of Mishor Adumim settlement industrial zone, where the main Sodastream factory is based, is encroaching on the land of the Jahalin bedouin, who are being forcibly relocated to a reservation in Abu Dis, next to the Jerusalem Municipal rubbish dump.

Bannatyne told Corporate Watch that he had been taken on a short visit to Israel by Sodastream where he was taken to two of the company's factories. He was taken to the company's Ashkelon factory, inside 1948 Israel, where syrup is manufactured and to the Mishor factory which manufactures 'machinery'. He said he was 'pleasantly surprised' by the conditions at the factories and that he was told that 'the workers were paid more than in the neighbouring villages'.

However, Palestinians living in the villages around Mishor Adumim are prevented from building any permanent structure under Israeli military orders. Their tents and huts, and even a primary school at Khan-al-Ahmar, are subject to demolition by the army (more details see)

'Ecostream is not Green' appeals to people

These building restrictions prevent the establishment of any Palestinian businesses, meaning that local Palestinians are forced to work in the settlements. Palestinian agriculture is limited by the settlements monopoly on land and the restrictions placed on the grazing of cattle, often leading to the seizure of cattle by the army see).

Palestinians working for Sodastream in Mishor Adumim are working in the context of the occupation. In January 2012 activists from Stop Sodastream Italy made the following statement in response to claims by the company that its workers were well treated: ?the fact remains that, as subjects of an occupation regime, these workers do not enjoy civil rights (including the right of workers to organize) and are under constant threat of having their permits to work in the settlement revoked by the company at any moment.?

"Palestinian workers often have no choice but to work in the settlements, with high unemployment rates that are a direct result of the Israeli occupation. The 2011 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development report explicitly links the decline in Palestinian agricultural and industrial sectors and the dire humanitarian conditions with Israeli government policies, in particular the confiscation of land and natural resources, restrictions on movement of people and goods, and isolation from international markets. Only a colonial mindset could claim to provide jobs to the very same people whose land and freedom have been stolen."

The Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions urges a boycott of all Israeli companies until Israel complies with international humanitarian law, recognizes the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality, the rights of return of refugees and ends the siege of Gaza and the occupation of all lands occupied in 1967.

Sodastream products are sold in the UK at Robert Dyas, John Lewis, Argos, Comet, Lakeland and some Sainsbury and Asda stores.

For more information on Soda Club see  pages 96-102 and here
Sodastream’s reply fails to convince