Construction equipment multinationals may be aiding Israeli war crimes, experts say

Human rights experts have alleged that six multinational construction equipment conglomerates may be aiding and abetting war crimes by supplying excavators and bulldozers to Israel, after photos and videos showed the Israeli military using their equipment to demolish villages in south Lebanon. The Guardian geolocated and verified images showing the Israeli military using excavators made by six companies – Caterpillar, Volvo, Hyundai, Doosan, Hitachi and Komatsu – to destroy homes, public utilities, shops and other structures across southern Lebanon.Israel has levelled entire villages inside the “yellow line”, a 608 sq km area occupied by Israel along the Lebanese-Israeli border. At least 46 villages in south Lebanon have suffered heavy damage, most of it caused by demolitions carried out after the 17 April Lebanon-Israel ceasefire, according to a satellite analysis by Bellingcat.The Israeli military said it was destroying Hezbollah infrastructure, with Israel’s defence minister, Israel-katz" class="entity-link entity-person" data-entity-id="4249" data-entity-type="person">Israel Katz, calling for “all homes in Lebanese villages near the border” to be destroyed to “remove threats”.However, Human Rights Watch has said that Israel’s wide-scale destruction of villages could amount to wanton destruction – a war crime. Displaced residents have watched from afar as videos show craters and vast fields of rubble where their family homes once stood.Video showed the Israeli military using foreign-produced excavators to destroy homesMuch of that destruction is being carried out by excavators and bulldozers produced and sold to Israel by foreign companies.Two pictures taken by the Associated Press on 12 and 15 April in the Lebanese border town of Mays al-Jabal show excavators from all six companies among flattened houses, as well as Hyundai, Caterpillar and Komatsu excavators actively destroying homes.Videos from the Lebanese border towns of Naqoura and Debel in April also showed the Israeli military using foreign-produced excavators to destroy homes and other infrastructure. Surveillance footage captured the Israeli military using a Volvo excavator to destroy solar panels and water infrastructure in Debel, a key source of electricity and water for the residents of the besieged town.The Israeli military, commenting on the incident in Debel, said the actions seen in the video were “not in line with the IDF’s values”, and that the incident was under investigation.Human rights experts said that supplying the construction equipment that enables the Israeli military to destroy homes and villages in south Lebanon could make these companies complicit in any war crimes and potentially lead to their executives facing legal consequences. Foreign companies should stop supplying heavy construction equipment to Israel until they are assured that it will not be used in war crimes, the experts said.“Businesses carrying out activities that contribute to serious international law violations in Lebanon, such as the extensive destruction of civilian property, may expose themselves, or their individual directors and managers, to the risk of prosecution for complicity in war crimes,” said Mark Dummett, the deputy programme director and head of business, security and human rights at Amnesty International.Dummett added that Israel’s “longer track record” of using military and civilian excavators to carry out demolitions in the West Bank, often in violation of international law, should have already raised concerns among companies continuing to supply equipment to Israel.He said: “Any basic corporate human rights due diligence process would have flagged the risks of the company contributing to these abuses and should have triggered robust measures to ensure that their machinery and equipment were not involved in abuses.”For decades, the Israeli military has used foreign-produced excavators to demolish the homes of Palestinians, often in circumstances that could amount to forced displacement and war crimes.Most recently, Caterpillar has come under scrutiny after the majority of US Democratic senators voted in April to block a $295m sale of Caterpillar D9 bulldozers to Israel. Caterpillar’s D9 armoured bulldozer has become notorious for its use by the Israeli military to demolish homes and for crushing the nonviolent US activist Rachel Corrie to death in 2003 in Gaza.Four of the six companies identified in Lebanon – excluding Hitachi and Komatsu – were named in a report by the UN special rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, as companies that profit from Israel’s displacement of Palestinians.CCTV footage captured a Volvo excavator destroying solar panels and water infrastructure in DebelEvidence of their products being used to commit widely documented abuses has seemingly not given some of these companies pause. Instead, companies such as Caterpillar have signed new multimillion dollar deals to supply the Israeli military with equipment.Now, excavators from Caterpillar and other multinationals are being used to systematically destroy dozens of villages in south Lebanon, after decades of similar destruction in Palestine.Much of this destruction has been carried out by the placing of charges, as in the case of the town of Qantara, where the Israeli military used 450 tonnes of explosives to level structures there.But the Israeli military has also used excavators to destroy border villages, relying on civilian contractors who bring in their construction equipment to assist with the demolitions. According to Haaretz, some contractors are paid based on the number of buildings they destroy.The construction equipment is supplied directly to the Israeli military and to local partners in Israel, where they are sold commercially to civilian construction firms. Because the Israeli military outsources its demolition work to civilian contractors, it means that any excavator or bulldozer exported to Israel – even if not sent to the military directly – could be used to destroy homes in Lebanon or Gaza.In the past, construction companies supplying heavy equipment to Israel have said they are not responsible for and cannot control how their products are used once they are sold.Volvo, Komatsu, Hitachi and HD Construction Equipment – which operates the Hyundai brand – said they had internal policies to ensure that human rights were respected, including in their contracts with dealers who sell their equipment. Volvo, Hitachi and Komatsu said they had limited ability to control what customers did with their products once they were sold to dealers, while HD Construction Equipment said the equipment bearing the Hyundai logo pictured in Lebanon was not sold by them and was “entirely unrelated”. Caterpillar did not reply to a request for a comment and Doosan is no longer being produced.However, business and human rights experts have said that pleading ignorance does not hold much weight given the abundance of evidence that their products are being used in human rights abuses.Alreem Kamal, an international lawyer who works on corporate accountability in the Middle East, said: “The documented use of similar equipment in contexts such as Gaza means that companies cannot plausibly claim that they were unaware of the risks.“The harm is foreseeable, and they bear a responsibility to take appropriate measures accordingly. Failure to do so may expose these companies to legal, reputational and financial consequences.”The UN has set out guidelines for corporations under the UN guiding principles on business and human rights. Under the UN principles, companies have a responsibility to avoid causing or contributing to human rights violations, and to mitigate human rights abuses directly linked to their products.The guidelines are nonbinding, but Sweden, Japan, and South Korea – where Volvo, Komatsu, Hitachi, Doosan and Hyundai are headquartered – have developed national action plans to implement the UN principles. The US, where Caterpillar is based, does not have an action plan.There is a legal precedent of executives and corporations being held accountable for selling products used in human rights violations, starting with the Nuremberg trials. Thirteen directors of IG Farben, a German chemical conglomerate, were charged for selling to the Nazis Zyklon B, the gas used to murder Jewish people and others during the Holocaust.In recent years, national courts are increasingly holding companies and their executives accountable for complicity in crimes committed abroad in conflict settings. French courts convicted the French cement company Lafarge and four former executives in April 2026 for financing terrorism for their role in paying armed groups in Syria, including Islamic State.In Sweden, a court case is continuing against two former executives of the Swedish oil company Lundin Energy, now Orrön Energy, who are accused of complicity in war crimes in what is now South Sudan. Both former executives deny the allegations.Kamal said: “The broader trend is clear: scrutiny of corporate involvement in atrocity crimes is growing and the impunity that has long protected them is steadily eroding.”