Dump Veolia Campaign

In 2003, French transport and environmental services multinational Veolia signed a contract to work with the Israeli government to help build and operate the Jerusalem Light Rail (JLR), which was set to run between west Jerusalem and the illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory.

Official documents about the JLR made clear that the purpose of the project was to tie illegal settlements more closely to Israel and facilitate the expansion of the settlements. By signing up as a major contractor for the project, Veolia was aligning itself with Israel’s long term goal of expelling as many indigenous Palestinians from their homeland as possible. It would later emerge that Veolia was also providing waste and transport infrastructure to illegal Israeli settlements.

The campaign against Veolia’s role in Israeli colonisation and apartheid used a range of tactics from direct action to government lobbying, but what won the day was the relentless strategic focus on hurting (or threatening to hurt) the company’s bottom line.

The victory of the BDS campaign against Veolia sent a clear message to other businesses and investors: there is a price to pay for complicity in Israeli apartheid.

Contracts with municipal governments, a key income source for Veolia, were targeted by campaigners. In 2009, a coalition of church groups, unions and solidarity activists successfully persuaded Stockholm city council not to renew its $4.5 billion contract with Veolia for managing the city’s metro system.

This success was replicated across the world, from London to Kuwait City to St. Louis to Edinburgh. City by city, tireless grassroots campaigning that involved everything from private lobbying to protest marches on town halls, persuaded local councils to dump Veolia. In total, Veolia lost an estimated $20 billion in contracts.

Veolia’s crimes went beyond complicity with the Israeli colonial state, to include water privatisation, labour rights violations and greenwashing. United by a common target, different issue groups and strands of the movement linked up and stood alongside one another, building power and strengthening the leverage of all (see: THEORY: Intersectionality).

Alarmed by the clear evidence of Veolia’s complicity and wary of the growing muscle of the campaign, a number of banks and investment funds divested (see: TACTIC: Divestment) from Veolia.

On more than a few occasions Veolia executives admitted that the campaign was hurting its profits and reputation. In 2013, Veolia began a gradual sale of its subsidiaries that were involved in projects tied to illegal Israeli settlements. Even then, BDS campaigns against Veolia intensified to ensure that the gradual sale was not a mere attempt to deflate the campaign's momentum. By 2015 Veolia had sold off the last of its operations in Israel, including its stake in the JLR.

The victory of the BDS campaign against Veolia sent a clear message to other businesses and investors: there is a price to pay for complicity in Israeli apartheid. Other major European companies including Orange and CRH have since exited the Israeli market.

These victories are important steps forward in the larger fight to end international support for Israeli apartheid and settler colonialism, and would never have been possible without countless hours of campaigning by thousands of people around the world.