{"id":38943,"date":"2019-04-10T10:23:04","date_gmt":"2019-04-10T10:23:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=38943"},"modified":"2019-04-10T10:23:04","modified_gmt":"2019-04-10T10:23:04","slug":"istanbul-election-irregularities-should-lead-to-annulment-erdogan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=38943","title":{"rendered":"Istanbul election irregularities should lead to annulment: Erdogan"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"56\">\n<p class=\"rtejustify\">\nSAN FRANCISCO: Home-sharing platform Airbnb on Tuesday announced it will back off a plan to remove Jewish settler homes in the occupied West Bank from its rental listings to end lawsuits brought by hosts.<br \/>The agreement settles all legal actions brought by hosts and potential hosts who went to court with concerns about listings, according to Airbnb.<br \/>Israeli lawyers filed a class action suit against Airbnb in November immediately after it said it planned to remove from its rental listings Jewish settler homes in the West Bank \u201cthat are at the core of the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians.\u201d<br \/>\u201cAirbnb will not move forward with implementing the removal of listings in the West Bank from the platform,\u201d the San Francisco-based company said Tuesday in a news release.<br \/>\u201cWe will continue to allow listings throughout all of the West Bank, but Airbnb will take no profits from this activity in the region.\u201d<br \/>Profit generated from Airbnb listings in the West Bank will be donated to non-profit groups dedicated to humanitarian aid in various parts of the world, according to the startup.<br \/>Airbnb added that it will implement the same approach for listings in Moscow-backed separatist regions South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two other disputed areas where the company previously planned to take action.<br \/>The class action suit had sought 15,000 shekels ($4,183) in damages for the lead plaintiff and each other settler host should Airbnb delete them from its listings, a spokesman said earlier.<br \/>The decision would have affected around 200 homes in Israeli settlements that had been listed on the platform.<br \/>Around 400,000 Israelis live in settlements that dot the West Bank and range in size from tiny hamlets to large towns, in addition to 200,000 living in settlements in occupied east Jerusalem.<br \/>The international community considers the settlements to be illegal and a barrier to peace between Israelis and Palestinians.<br \/>A major campaigner against Airbnb\u2019s earlier decision told AFP that \u201cAirbnb has realized what we have long argued \u2014 that boycotts of Jews anywhere, even just in the West Bank, are discriminatory.<br \/>\u201cThis is a huge blow to efforts to delegitimize the Jewish presence in the West Bank,\u201d said Eugene Kontorovich, Director of International Law at the Jerusalem-based Kohelet Policy Forum.<br \/>But Arvind Ganesan, of New York-based Human Rights Watch, called Airbnb\u2019s retreat from the decision disappointing.<br \/>\u201cDonating profits from unlawful settlement listings, as they\u2019ve promised to do, does nothing to remedy the \u2018human suffering\u2019 they have acknowledged that their activities cause,\u201d Ganesan said.<br \/>\u201cBy continuing to do business in settlements, they remain complicit in the abuses settlements trigger.\u201d<br \/>Israel\u2019s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had pledged to annex settlements in the occupied West Bank if he wins Tuesday\u2019s elections.<br \/>Exit polls showed him neck-and-neck with his main challenger Benny Gantz.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SAN FRANCISCO: Home-sharing platform Airbnb on Tuesday announced it will back off a plan to remove Jewish settler homes in the occupied West Bank from its rental listings to end lawsuits brought by hosts.The agreement settles all legal actions brought by hosts and potential hosts who went to court with concerns about listings, according to&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":38944,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}