Above photo: Maersk.
The vote comes as Israel resumes its brutal war on the strip.
Killing at least 420 people in less than 24 hours.
Shareholders in Danish shipping giant Maersk are set to hold a vote on 18 March for a proposal to cease weapons shipments to Israel for as long as it is waging war on Gaza.
The vote comes as Israel has renewed its genocidal campaign against the strip, killing over 420 Palestinians since early Tuesday morning.
Weapons transfers to Israel are “in violation of international conventions, assuming that military equipment, weapons, and components were used in Israeli army operations where international conventions are breached,” shareholder Zen Donen told AFP.
Yet the shipping firm’s board does not support the proposal.
“The premise of the proposal is not correct, as the company is not transporting arms to Israel,” the company said, despite recent investigative reports in Danish media claiming otherwise. The reports show that Maersk has shipped armored combat vehicles and other military hardware to Israel.
The Eko activist group has drafted its own proposal demanding the firm’s transparency – which the Maersk board has also rejected.
Denmark has not implemented an arms embargo restricting weapons shipments to Israel, like other European nations have.
UN experts have recently called for countries to impose bans on arms exports to Israel.
“All States must ‘ensure respect’ for international humanitarian law by parties to an armed conflict, as required by 1949 Geneva Conventions and customary international law. States must accordingly refrain from transferring any weapon or ammunition – or parts for them – if it is expected, given the facts or past patterns of behavior, that they would be used to violate international law,” UN experts said in late February.
“The need for an arms embargo on Israel is heightened by the International Court of Justice’s ruling on 26 January 2024 that there is a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza and the continuing serious harm to civilians since then,” they added.
Maersk ships transporting goods to Israeli ports were targeted by the Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF) last year as part of Sanaa’s pro-Palestine blockade. This caused the company to face a significant crash in profits due to expensive reroutes.
The YAF recently announced a decision to resume attacks on all Israeli ships in the Red Sea, Bab al-Mandab strait, and the Gulf of Aden in response to Tel Aviv’s ceasefire violations and blocking of aid to Gaza.
This has prompted violent US attacks on Yemen, which the YAF has responded to by targeting the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman several times.
The Maersk shareholder vote coincides with a brutal campaign of Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip.
According to the director of Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital, wounded Palestinians are dying “every minute” due to a severe lack of medical resources.