‘It’s like stealing’: Palestinian family’s seized property listed on Booking.com

Some of Mohammad al-Sbeih’s fondest childhood memories are of his small farm in the hills south of Bethlehem, where three generations of his family grew wheat and barley. “It was a hard plot to farm as it was on a hillside with terraces, but it was so beautiful,” Sbeih remembers. Now, however, the houses and roads of an Israeli settlement, Neve Daniel, are built where the Sbeih family once grew food, and the expansive view towards the sea is the chief selling point of a rental property being advertised on Booking.com. The description on the global travel site says: “Guests can relax in the garden or on the terrace, enjoying the fresh air and scenic surroundings.” It adds the Neve Daniel house has a picnic area and is “ideal for outdoor gatherings”. The geolocation of this home in the settlement of Neve Daniel in the West Bank offered for rent on Booking.com matches the location of the Sbeih family land. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum A new report by Ekō , a US-based advocacy group focused on corporate accountability, lists 41 Booking.com listings in 14 illegal Israeli settlements across the occupied West Bank in two main clusters, along the Jordan valley including the Dead Sea, and in the settlement ring that has been built around East Jerusalem, including two inside Jerusalem’s old city, on territory captured by Israel in 1967 and annexed in 1980. …