Israel says it’s “shameful and unfortunate” that home rental broker Airbnb decided to stop featuring listings in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
The tourism minister in Israel said Israeli authorities would support legal challenges brought against Airbnb by those settlers who listed their homes with the lodging tech company, the BBC reported.
Airbnb announced Monday that it would be removing listings in these areas because the settlements “are at the core of the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians.” There are about 200 listings that fall into this criteria, but the tech company did not give a timeline for when it would be removing them.
Palestinians and their allies have widely praised the move, since they were the ones who initially put pressure on the site to stop providing stays in homes that were located in these contested settlements.
A group that represents Israeli settlers, the Yesha Council, accused Airbnb of becoming a “political site” whose decision was a “result of either anti-Semitism or capitulation to terrorism, or both.”
Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization based in the U.S., urged Jewish communities to boycott Airbnb following its decision.
Some say the settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law, a claim Israel disputes.
