Above photo: Maersk container in the Maale Adumim settlement.
A new report details a shipping and logistics giant’s role in sustaining illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine and Syrian territories.
A new report details a shipping and logistics giant’s role in sustaining illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine and Syrian territories.
A.P. Moller Maersk is a publicly traded Danish company that netted a revenue of $51.1 billion in 2023. According to research compiled by the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) and its Mask off Maersk campaign, the company has repeatedly facilitated shipments to the United States from illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and the Syrian Golan Heights.
“The global structures of financialized capitalism, logistics and supply chains play an outsize role in the maintenance of extraction and accumulation. As one of the largest corporations that serves these functions, Maersk helps both to arm the Israeli regime and export the spoils of its colonial project,” PYM’s Kaleem Hawa told Mondoweiss.
This is the third report on Maersk that’s been released by the group, but the first to specifically focus on the transport of goods from illegal settlements, along with its other connections to Israeli apartheid.
In one section of the report, PYM documents multiple shipments that Maersk made for companies that appear on the United Nations’s (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) database as a result of their connections to illegal Israeli settlements. These include businesses Extal Ltd, a private aluminum company that partners with Israeli weapons manufacturers and operates out of the illegal Ma’ale Adumim settlement in the occupied West Bank. Another Maersk client is Comasco Ltd, a construction company that maintains contracts with the Israeli Ministry of Defense and has sold products used to demolish Palestinian homes.
Maersk has also shipped for companies that do not appear on the OHCHR database, but are connected to Israeli apartheid and occupation. This includes Elbit Systems Ltd, Israel’s largest private arms supplier.
The report notes that Elbit’s weapons have been used to attack people in Gaza during the current genocide, including the seven aid workers who were killed by the Israeli army last April. Elbit has faced a wave of protests across the world, which led to the French multinational insurance company AXA divesting from the company in August 2024.
PYM’s investigation only covers shipments that were imported into the United States between February 20, 2019, and November 8, 2024, meaning the information is only a small sample of Maersk’s activity. “Rather than serving as a comprehensive account, these findings should be viewed as an indication of a broader pattern of Maersk’s involvement in the export of goods for companies operating within illegal settlements,” notes the report.
The Mask Off Maersk campaign was launched last June, to raise awareness about the company’s connection to Israeli apartheid and the genocide. “Maersk is one of the most profitable companies on earth, with money soaked in the blood of over 40,000 Palestinian martyrs. It is involved in all aspects of the supply chain of death – bringing military cargo to arms companies for assembly and shipping cargo to Israel from the US,” reads its website.
As a result of these efforts, Maersk ships have been blocked from docking in Algeciras, Spain. Maersk denied that the cargo included military weapons or ammunition, but essentially confirmed that it was headed to Israel. “It is our understanding that Spain has in its discretion changed its criteria and is now rejecting vessels that carry anything military-related going to, or from, Israel, notwithstanding such cargo being legal,” said the company in a statement.
Hawa points out Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies could not be maintained without companies like Maersk, including the Gaza genocide or the current Israeli offensive taking place in the West Bank.
“The current military campaign in the West Bank could not exist without a stably-reproduced system for the transportation of goods produced on stolen Palestinian land,” he told Mondoweiss. “With this report, we tried to make it clear that Zionism depends on more than just weapons for its ethnic cleansing, and that companies like Maersk will continue to violate international law unless we stop them.”