Stop the Train! German National Railways Stop Building an Israeli Train through Palestinian Land

How We Won

May 09, 2011

Just over half a year ago, a tiny group of Israeli feminists issued a report exposing the cooperation of German National Railways (Deutsche Bahn) in the construction of a high-speed Israeli train from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem that crosses Palestinian villages in the Occupied Territories. Deutsche Bahn was coordinating the electrification of the route, and "Who Profits from the Occupation?", a research project of the Women’s Coalition for Peace, exposed them and a number of other companies.

The train line's route breaks both international and Israeli law, and local Palestinian activists have called on the international community to help target the international corporations involved in the planning, engineering, tunneling and construction of the train line. Fast forward many months later and an international campaign has successfully convinced Deutsche Bahn to pledge in writing that they will have no further involvement in the project (English here).

Israel is building a new 28-minute bullet train to connect the cities of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem through occupied Palestinian Land, some of it privately owned, at a great cost to Palestinian communities.

The train line's route breaks both international and Israeli law, and local Palestinian activists have called on the international community to help target the international corporations involved in the planning, engineering, tunneling and construction of the train line.

"We, the people of Beit Surik, do not want the train line to be built on our land," Palestinian villagers affected by the train line wrote in a public letter. "We see as fundamentally important that the people of the world support our right to decide on the use of our own land and help us change the route of this train line."

A number of international corporations are involved in the planning, engineering, tunneling and construction of the train line. They include: German National Railways (Deutsche Bahn), which is planning the electrification of the route and is owned by the German government.

Pressure Deutsche Bahn to immediately end their involvement with the rail line. Call on the German government, whose rhetoric is supportive of Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories, to end their involvement in a rail line project which explicitly violates international law by appropriating Palestinian land.

Recent Signatures