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BOYCOTT ISRAEL CAMPAIGN
COMPANY : Intel

PRODUCTS & AFFILIATED COMPANIES:

Processors - Celeron, Pentium, Itanium, etc
Motherboards, Chipsets, Adapters, Controllers, Network Products, Wireless components, Embeded Products, Software Development Tools.

RESEARCH FINDINGS :

Intel are one of the biggest supporters of Israel. Their very first development centre outside the US was opened in Haifa in 1974. Since then they have continued pouring investment in to Israel.[2] By year 2000 they employ over 4000 israelis. Exports from their Lachish-Qiryat Gat plant in israel (opened feb 99) total $ 3 million a day at peak capacity - approximately $ 1 billion a year. [1]

Al-Awda (Palestine Right to Return Coalition) have pointed out that the Intel plant at"Qiryat Gat" is built on land Israel confiscated from the Palestinian villages of Iraq al Manshiya. Iraq al Manshiya was a village of 2000 people living in 300 houses with two mosques and one school. The original Palestinian inhabitants were terrorised out of the village and then the whole village was razed to the ground to prepare the way for the new israeli settlement of Qiryat Gat. Today the remaining population from Iraq al Manshiya is still not allowed to return.[4][5][6]. Legal action against Intel for building on looted land is being considered [7].

ADDITIONAL INFO & REFs :

[1]

Intel in Israel, from intel website:
http://www.intel.com/intel/community/israel/aboutsite.htm


1974: IDC - Intel's first design and development center outside the USA, was set up in Haifa.

1985: Fab 8 - Intel's first facility outside the USA for the manufacture of microprocessors and memory began operations in Har Hotzvim, Jerusalem.

1998: A development center in Jerusalem (formerly "Digital") was purchased and integrated into Intel Israel.

1999:

  • Fab 18, the new plant in Lachish-Qiryat Gat, began manufacturing processors using 0.18 micron technology.
  • A branch for the development of network and communications products was opened in Omer, close to Beersheba.Intel International acquired two companies operating in Israel:

    DSPC: A leading international developer and supplier of chip systems and software for the manufacture of cellular telephones for CDMA and TDMA devices.

    Most of 2000 DSPC's development efforts are currently directed at the 3G (third generation) market, which will integrate cellular phones with multimedia and Internet capabilities. DSPC develops, markets and sells integrated circuits (ASIC) based on DSP technology. Its customers include Motorola, Philips, Kenwood, Sanyo and Sharp.

    Dialogic Israel Ltd. (DIL): DIL develops solutions for computerized telephony and Internet telephony. Founded in 1993 in the Tefen Industrial Park as an R&D subsidiary of Dialogic, DIL employs 35 engineers. Its products are used in voice, fax, data, voice identification and synthesis, call center management and IP telephony applications - in CPE and in a public network environment.
  • $ 810 million: The sum of Intel Israel's exports in 1999, a 92% increase in comparison with 1998.

2000: Exports from the Intel Lachish-Qiryat Gat plant total $ 3 million a day at peak capacity - approximately $ 1 billion a year.

 

[2]

Investments in Israel

From Embassy of Israel website:
http://www.israelemb.org/economic/uscompanies.htm

  • Fabrication facility in Jerusalem - $1.6b
  • New facility in Kiryat Gat
  • Design Center in Haifa.
  • 5% holding in RADVision for $1m (4/97).
  • Acquired Shani.
  • Invested in RADGuard (5/98).
  • Owns 100% of Intel Israel (1974) Ltd.
  • Inaugurated $20m development campus in Haifa(1998).
  • Invested in TelesciCOM of Holon (4/99)
  • Acqires DSP for $1.6b (10/99)

 

[3] Intels investments in apartheid education in Israel:
http://www.intel.com/intel/community/israel/education.htm

".. Intel invests in the promotion of higher education in Israel. In addition to scholarships for students, it allocates considerable resources to funding research and purchasing laboratory equipment."

 

[4] Al-Awda website: http://al-awda.org/intel_divest.htm

22 June 2001, AL-AWDA ACTION ALERT

ASK INTEL TO DIVEST FROM ISRAEL

Intel is the premier microchip maker and commands a market lead worldwide over competitors such as Advanced Micro Devices. Intel also has developed significant production facilities in Israel. Last year, the company exported products valued at $2 billion from Israel, of which $1.3 billion were from its FAB-18 plant in "Qiryat Gat". More investments were planned this year in expansion and growth of Intel's Israeli facilities including manufacturing a large portion of Intel's Pentium 4 chips. Intel investment to FAB-18 amounted to $1 billion, and the Israeli government contributed an additional $600 million. The plant site is located between the rail line from Tel Aviv to Beer Sheba and the new Trans-Israel highway. However, the plant site is on land Israel confiscated from the Palestinian villages of Iraq al Manshiya..

The original inhabitants of Iraq Al-Manshiya and the near-by village of Al-Faluja could have become Israeli citizens. However, Israel expelled the population and confiscated their property after the 1948 war ended contrary to international law and an Armistice Agreement sponsored by the UN. According to Benny Morris' book "1948", expulsion was achieved by "intimidation using all means". All village buildings were demolished and Israel built the settlements of Qiryat Gat, Shahar and Nehora on village lands. The villagers were deported to the Hebron area which was under Jordanian rule at the time. Some have since become US citizens. For more information see:
http://www.palestineremembered.com/Gaza/Iraq-al-Manshiyya/

ACTION:

Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition calls on its members and supporters to contact Intel Corporation to express dismay at the company's plans, and to call on it to divest from Israel.

TALKING POINTS:

  • Intel should reconsider its investments in Israel. The company's expansion site is located on land Israel confiscated from the Palestinian village of Iraq Al-Manshiya. This is outrageous.
  • Israel forced out the original inhabitants of Iraq Al-Manshiya and the near-by village of Al-Faluja after the 1948 war ended contrary to international law and an armistice agreement sponsored by the UN and which Israel signed.
  • Intel should not participate and allow Israel to have economic benefits from the illegal dispossession of Palestinians. Israel is denying Palestinian refugees their right of return to their lands and homes which it is occupying. This right is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and International Law, and is supported by numerous UN resolutions.
  • Given Israel's apartheid policies, continuing abuses of fundamental human rights, and violations of International Law, Intel should divest from Israel forthwith.
Address your letters to:

Craig Barrett, CEO
Intel Corporation
2200 Mission College Blvd.
P.O. Box 58119
Santa Clara, CA 95052-8119
Email: Craig.R.Barrett@intel.com

Bill F Sheppard, Executive Vice President
Intel Corporation
2200 Mission College Blvd.
P.O. Box 58119
Santa Clara, CA 95052-8119
Phone: 1-408-554-0888
Email Bill.F.Sheppard@intel.com

Please cc your correspondence to:
Al-Awda-Alerts@mail.com

 

[5]

Al-Awda website: http://al-awda.org/intel_update.htm

22 July 2001, AL-AWDA ACTION ALERT

Updated Al-Awda alert: Intel support of Israeli ethnic cleansing

Intel's president and chief executive Craig Barrett said, June 18 on a visit to Israel, that Intel is reconsidering a $3 billion plus expansion of the company's Kiryat Gat plant (built on the lands of Iraq Al Manshiya) due to "the current economic climate and industry slowdown" (Jerusalem Post June 19). This followed an initial call by Al-Awda for activists to contact Intel to protest their investments in Israel. Over 2000 letters were sent to Intel based on that call. Thanks to our supporters abroad, articles and opinion pieces on this have also published in newspapers in the Arab World including: Al Dustour (Jordan), Al Watan (Qatar), Al Hayat, Al Safeer (Lebanon), Al-Quds, Al Ayyam (Palestine), Al Ahram (Cairo), Al-Watan (Kuwait), and Al-Khaleej (United Arab Emirates). As a result of our initial alert, we also identified other refugees from Iraq Al Manshiya. Thus, we now ask you to write to the media internationally as well as Intel to ask for divestment from Israel.

Last year Intel exported products valued at $2 billion from Israel, of which $1.3 billion were from a plant in "Kiryat Gat" called FAB-18. Intel's Israeli facilities are slated to manufacture a large portion of Intel's Pentium 4 chips. The plant site is located on land that belongs to the Palestinian village of Iraq Al Manshiya.

Meron Benvensti wrote in his book "Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948" (Univ. of Calif. Press, 2000, p. 156): "The signing of the armistice agreement did not put an end to the expulsions [by Israel]. In late February 1949, the remaining inhabitants of the township of Faluja and the village of Iraq al-Manshiyya...were expelled. Approximately 3,000 people were ejected from their communities, despite Israel's having guaranteed that they could remain there with full security to themselves, their homes, and all their property." He also added in page 318: "In Iraq al-Manshiyya...the remnants of the village of 2000 (approximately 300 houses, two mosques, and a school) have been swallowed up by the industrial park of the city of Kiryat Gat. "

According to the Israeli historian Benny Morris, the expulsion was achieved by "intimidation using all means". For more information see:
http://www.palestineremembered.com/Gaza/Iraq-al-Manshiyya/

ACTION:

Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition calls on its members and supporters to write to their local newspapers and also to finance newspapers and magazines. Letters to the editor (short and respectful, 150 words or less) or Opinion Articles (700-800 words; example below) explaining the facts will go a long way to ensuring Intel and other companies start to divest and reconsider additional investments in the Israeli Apartheid economy.

TALKING POINTS:

  • Intel should reconsider its investments in Israel. The company's expansion site is located on land Israel confiscated from the Palestinian village of Iraq Al-Manshiya. This is outrageous.
  • A campaign against Intel is spreading fast. Media in the Arab world and in Israel picked up the story. Stockholders are becoming wary. Other companies are carefully following developments.
  • Israel forced out the original inhabitants of Iraq Al-Manshiya and the near-by village of Al-Faluja after the 1948 war ended contrary to international law and an armistice agreement sponsored by the UN and which Israel signed.
  • Intel should not participate and allow Israel to have economic benefits from the illegal dispossession of Palestinians. Israel is denying Palestinian refugees their right of return to their lands and homes which it is occupying. This right is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and International Law, and is supported by numerous UN resolutions.
  • Given Israel's apartheid policies, continuing abuses of fundamental human rights, and violations of International Law, Intel should divest from Israel forthwith.
  • With Israel continuing its war-like policies, the situation in the Middle East continues to get worse (mostly for Palestinians but also to a lesser extent for Israelis). Thus, it seems unwise for good companies like Intel to invest in such an ethnically segregated and volatile place. Afterall, how does Intel expect 8 million Palestinians (2/3rd of them refugees and the remained under military occupation or as 5th class citizens) to continue to accept these things and to peacefully accept their fate. It makes little economic sense.
Letters may be addressed to the letters editor of your favorite newspaper or other media outlet. Each letter should be sent to one newspaper only and include your name, address and phone number.

You could also write letters to these more national/international newspapers:

You can send copies of your letters or opinion pieces to:
Mr. Craig Barret, Intel's CEO at Craig.R.Barrett@intel.com,
Mr. Jim Jarret, VP of Worldwide Government Affairs at jim.jarrett@intel.com

Please send a blind copy (bcc) of your correspondence to:
Al-Awda-Alerts@mail.com

 

[6]

Al-Awda website: http://al-awda.org/intel_example.htm

Intel investments in Israel and International Law
by Mazin Qumsiyeh, Ph.D.*

Last year Intel exported products valued at nearly $2 billion from Israel, of which $1.3 billion were from a plant in "Qiryat Gat" called FAB-18. Intel investment in FAB-18 amounted to $1 billion. The plant site is located between the rail line from Tel Aviv to Beer Sheba and the new Trans-Israel highway. This is land that belongs to the Palestinian village of Iraq al Manshiya.

Al-Faluja and Iraq Al-Manshiya were twin and peaceful Palestinian villages that came under Israeli rule on 24 February 1949 well after the war as part of a UN-sponsored armistic agreement (See Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, Cambridge University Press. 1987). The agreement contains assurance for the safety of the persons and the property of these two villages. In an exchange of letters, repeating the same assurances, between Dr. Walter Eytan, Head of the Israeli Delegation and Dr. Ralph J. Bunche, the American UN Mediator on Palestine, it was stated that "Those of the civilian population who may wish to remain in Al Faluja and Iraq Al Manshiya are to be permitted to do so... All of these civilians shall be fully secure in their persons, abodes, property and personal effects".
According to Morris, both Prime Minister Ben-Gurion and Weitz (head of the Jewish agency) approved driving the inhabitants out in contravention of international law and contrary to the Armistice Agreement that Israel signed. The inhabitants of the two villages could have become Israeli citizens had they not been expelled. Instead, they were deported to an area which was then under Jordanian rule. Some have since become US citizens. Today, the expelled population of Iraq Al Manshiya amounts to 14,345 registered refugees with the UN agency on refugees. Out of the total, about 1,500 are born before 1948, many of them can provide testimony to their ethnic cleansing. Israel confiscated their property and demolished all buildings in this and nearly 500 other Palestinian villages and towns. For details see:

http://www.palestineremembered.com/Gaza/Iraq-al-Manshiyya/

Moshe Shertok (Sharett), Israel's foreign minister, stated on 28 July 1949, some four months after the expulsion of the population of the two villages: "It is not possible in every place to arrange what some of our boys engineered in Faluja [where] they chased away the Arabs after we signed an... international commitment... There were warning from the UN and the U.S. in this matter... [There were] at least 25-30,000... whom we could not uproot." (Morris, 249).
The Palestine Right to Return Coalition (Al-Awda.org ) tracked down many of the previous residents. An international divestment campaign just started with emphasis on the Arab and Islamic world, a large market for Intel. This campaign is timely not only because of these legal and historical rights issues but also because of Israel's continued ethnic cleansing and occupation of Palestine.
Israel's policies of closure, collective punishment and siege, demolishing homes , demolishing homes, land confiscation, and targeted assasinations, are serious violations of International law and human rights as documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the UN Human Rights Commission, Physicians for Human Rights, and even Israeli Human Rights organizations. In the last eight months alone, the Israeli army has killed 500 and injured over 17,000 Palestinians. One third of the victims were under the age of 18. The Israeli army continues its policy of demolishing homes, collective punishment, uprooting trees, and siege of Palestinian towns and villages. Israeli peace block's Uri Avnery declared that these are bankrupt policies intended to protect colonial settlement of Palestinian lands in defiance of International law. Further, Israel continues to set up an Apartheid system in many ways worse than what South Africa tried to do. Intel would be wise to dis-invest now considering the actions described here and many others over the past 53 years combined. Israel would be wise to allow refugees to return and to abandon the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank instead of using might to suppress the call for justice. Until this happens, Israel/Palestine will remain in turmoil and foreign companies considering investments in Israel would be wise to do some homework before investing in an unstable Apartheid regime.

* The author is chair of the Media Committee of Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition (http://Al-Awda.org)

 

[7]

Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-
bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/07/08/BU162036.DTL&type=business

* for full article with additional photos and maps :
http://www.inminds.co.uk/boycott-news-0194.html

Intel chip plant located on disputed Israeli land -
Intel could face political, legal problems with chip plant in Israeli

by Henry Norr
San Francisco Chronicle
8 July 2002

Just how diligent was Intel's due diligence when it chose to build a multibillion-dollar chip plant in Qiryat Gat, Israel?

Will choosing that location eventually come back to haunt the company, or at least drag it into some pesky, embarrassing and costly legal entanglements?

These questions are on my mind after checking out the history of the site -- not only on several Web sites dedicated to the Palestinian cause, but also in Israeli government and United Nations documents collected by a prominent Israeli historian.

Whatever your views on the Middle East crisis, the issue deserves some scrutiny -- even though it involves a detour into what many now consider ancient history.

Intel Fab18 plant built on looted land of Al-Faluja
Intel Fab18 plant built on looted land of Al-Faluja

Intel calls the plant Fab 18 ("fab" being chip-industry jargon for a facility where the silicon wafers that are eventually turned into working chips are fabricated). The fab, which went into production in 1999, was the fruit of a $1 billion investment by the Santa Clara company, supplemented by a $600 million grant from the Israeli government.

Just a year after opening, its output had reached up to $3 million a day, and it accounted for $1.3 billion of Intel's $2 billion in exports from Israel.

According to the company's annual report, it's Intel's second-largest facility outside the United States, after one in County Kildare, Ireland.

Qiryat (sometimes spelled Kiryat) Gat is close to the geographical center of Israel, along a major north-south rail line and the route of the planned Trans-Israel Highway. It's on land that would have been part of Arab Palestine under the partition plan adopted by the United Nations in 1947, but within the larger Israel that emerged from the 1948 war between that country and its neighbors.

In other words, it's on land the United States and most of the world's governments consider a legitimate part of Israel, not in the territories Israel conquered in the 1967 war, from which the United Nations has demanded its withdrawal.

But from a legal and historical point of view, Qiryat Gat happens to be an unusual location: It was not taken over by the Israeli military in 1948. Instead, it was part of a small enclave, known as the Faluja pocket, that the Egyptian army and local Palestinian forces had managed to hold through the end of the war. (Among the Egyptian officers was Gamal Abdel Nasser, who became his country's president six years later.)

The area was surrounded by Israeli forces, however. When Israel and Egypt signed an armistice agreement in February 1949, the latter agreed to withdraw its soldiers, but it insisted that the agreement explicitly guarantee the safety and property of the 3,100 or so Arab civilians in the area.

Israel accepted that demand. In an exchange of letters that were filed with the United Nations and became an annex to the main armistice agreement, the two countries agreed that "those of the civilian population who may wish to remain in Al-Faluja and Iraq al Manshiya (the two villages within the enclave covered by the letters) are to be permitted to do so. . . . All of these civilians shall be fully secure in their persons, abodes, property and personal effects."

(The fullest account of this episode I've found is "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949," a scholarly treatise by Benny Morris, a prominent Israeli historian, published by Cambridge University Press. Born and reared in Israel and now a professor at Ben Gurion University in Beersheba, Morris can hardly be called pro-Palestinian, to judge by articles of his published in the June 13 and June 27, 2002, issues of the New York Review of Books. Other Israeli historians have produced similar accounts.)

Within days, the security the agreement had promised residents of the Al- Faluja pocket proved an illusion. Within weeks, the entire local population had fled to refugee camps outside of Israel. (Photos of them on the road are posted at www.palestineremembered.com/Gaza/al-faluja -- a site dedicated to preserving the memories and experiences of Palestinian refugees.)

Morris presents ample evidence that the people of the Al-Faluja area left in response to a campaign of intimidation conducted by the Israeli military. He quotes, among other sources, reports filed by Ralph Bunche, the distinguished black American educator and diplomat who was serving as chief U. N. mediator in the region.

Bunche's reports include complaints from U.N. observers on the scene that "Arab civilians . . . at Al-Faluja have been beaten and robbed by Israeli soldiers," that there were attempted rapes and that the Israelis were "firing promiscuously" on the Arab population.

Even though Bunche won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950 for his efforts, some might be inclined to doubt that he understood the whole story of what was happening in the area.

But even the staunchest supporter of Israel would have a hard time impugning Morris' other main source on this episode: Moshe Sharett, Israel's foreign minister at the time.

Sharett, it turns out, was acutely embarrassed by the behavior of his country's military in the area. In a sharply worded memo to the army chief of staff, he noted both overt acts of violence by soldiers in the area and "a 'whispering propaganda campaign among the Arabs, threatening them with attacks and acts of vengeance by the army."

"There is no doubt," Sharett wrote, "that there is a calculated action aimed at increasing the number of those (Arab civilians) going to the Hebron Hills (in the West Bank, then controlled by Jordan) as if of their own free will, and, if possible, to bring about the evacuation of the whole civilian population" of the pocket.

Sharett's main concern, it appears, was that the campaign in Al-Faluja called into question "our sincerity as a party to an international agreement."

Whether he had any moral scruples about the situation isn't clear. A few months later, when Arab civilians in other parts of Israel's newly conquered territory resisted similar pressures, he wrote, with what sounds like regret, "It is not possible in every place to arrange what some of our boys engineered in Faluja (where) they chased away the Arabs after we signed an . . . international commitment."

Nowadays we'd call the Al-Faluja events ethnic cleansing.


LEGAL RECOURSE?

In substance, what happened to the people of Al-Faluja and Iraq al Manshiya isn't very different from what happened to the residents of hundreds of other Palestinian villages.

Only a few things make this case unique: the legal agreement that was supposed to guarantee the residents' security, the Sharett memos recording what happened to that guarantee -- and the fact that 40 years later their land, having been converted by the Israelis into an industrial park, became the site of an Intel fab.

Now Palestinians in the United States and elsewhere are starting to organize around this case. A Connecticut organization called the Palestine Right to Return Coalition (www.Al-Awda.org) is encouraging Palestinians and their supporters to write to the media about the case. (A version of the story appeared earlier, in somewhat garbled form, in The Register, a British Web site covering technology).

The group is calling on Intel to, among other things, divest from Israel.

It's also tracking down the original Arab villagers and their descendants -- now almost 15,000 people in all, including people living in Texas, Louisiana and New York.

While the group hasn't announced any plans for legal action, some Palestinian lawyers are looking for ways to pursue their cause in the courts. At least some experts think the residents of Al-Faluja and Iraq al Manshiya could make a strong case.

For example, Francis Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said he wasn't familiar with the details of the situation. But based on my summary of the history, he said that the original inhabitants and their heirs could take Intel to a U.S. court in a type of suit known as an in rem proceeding or under similar doctrines in many other countries and seek to attach Fab 18's assets.

"Intel and its lawyers and bankers had better be very careful here," he said, noting that a similar legal strategy was used in cases involving the former British colony of Rhodesia -- and by Jewish survivors of the Holocaust.

Boyle is a longtime supporter of the Palestinian cause, so I talked to a lawyer at the opposite end of the political spectrum: Abraham Sofaer, George P.

Shultz Distinguished Scholar and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, a former federal judge who served as legal adviser to the State Department from 1985 to 1990.

Not surprisingly, Sofaer was less sanguine about the prospects for any such lawsuit, but he also said he wasn't familiar with the facts of the case. The main obstacle, he said, is the absence of a treaty resolving the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians and legal structures for settling property claims.

"Without that," Sofaer said, "the courts are going to be very reluctant to get involved" in such cases. But if peace ever comes, he said, "I'd be very happy to represent the Palestinians."

Noting that native Americans won compensation in several major cases once Congress adopted procedures for dealing with such claims, he said, "It sounds as if there's potential in the long run for recovery here."


LAND OWNERSHIP

Several weeks ago, I asked Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy about the history of the land where Fab 18 sits. He said the company had acquired rights to it in a deal that was legal under the laws of a recognized sovereign state. "We don't think it's appropriate for us now to question the Israeli government.

"We cannot insert ourselves into the middle of what is really a political issue" between Israel and the Palestinians, he said.

Those arguments are understandable, though I'm sure they won't placate the Palestinians, and I wonder how they'll stand up if the case ever gets to court.

Mulloy also said the fab is not actually in the area that made up the Al- Faluja pocket in 1948. "These claims didn't come up until after we built the fab -- there were no Web sites and no campaigns about it when we did our due diligence" in the mid-1990s, he said.

When I went back to my sources, those arguments didn't check out. The maps I examined seem to confirm the Palestinians' claim that Fab 18 is on land that was part of the village of Iraq al Manshiya. As for when the issue arose, I checked and found that Morris' book was first published in 1987 and widely debated in Israel.

I left Mulloy several follow-up messages reporting what I'd found, but he didn't respond.

I also called the Israeli consulate in San Francisco to get its perspective, but the first official I spoke to there said he didn't believe the story, and the press spokesman he referred me to hasn't called back.

 

URL: http://www.inminds.com/boycott-intel.html