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Article

11 Mar 2016

Author:
Jack Moore, Newsweek

G4S to sell off operations in Israel as BDS claims victory

G4S, the world’s largest security firm, is selling its entire business in Israel in a move that it said on Thursday was for “commercial reasons.” The global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign has claimed that it was responsible for the decision because of pressure it applied on the British firm. G4S noted in its 2015 results on Wednesday that it would be exiting the Israeli market after a review of its portfolio of businesses. The British company said that it has sought to remove dozens of businesses from its portfolio in the last two years and this decision had the same motives as other sales. “Since 2013, we have been running a review of our business portfolio to determine which businesses we want to remain invested in and which we are looking to divest from, purely to streamline the business and to get a greater degree of strategic focus,” Nigel Fairbrass, spokesman for G4S, tells Newsweek...The security company employs approximately 8,000 people in Israel. It says it has no workers at prisons or in control of prisons in the West Bank, but it does supply them with security equipment. Still, investors in G4S have faced criticism from anti-Israel activists who say the firm is complicit in Israeli human rights abuses within the prisons. The Palestinian Authority has previously accused Israeli forces of torturing Palestinian prisoners.