What is Keter Plastic?

Keter Plastic is a privately owned Israeli company founded in 1948[1] which specializes in manufacturing plastic products, including furniture, storage solutions, and various household and garden items. Keter Plastic’s products are available in Canada through major retail chains and online platforms like Home Depot, Canadian Tire, Walmart, Amazon, Costco, and Rona.

Is Keter Plastic operating in Israeli settlements?

Until 2014, Keter Plastic was operating in an illegal settlement in the occupied Palestinian territories (OPT). This history looms large over Keter’s legacy as a company, as it was able to exploit and profit from stolen Palestinian land and resources for years.

Specifically, Keter Plastic, along with its fully-owned subsidiary Lipski, had operated factories in the Barkan Industrial Zone, an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank.[2] Barkan, connected to the residential settlement of Ariel, was established in 1981 on land seized from the Palestinian villages of Haris, Bruqin, and Sarta. This industrial zone is notorious for housing a disproportionate number of environmentally harmful factories, with toxic waste from Barkan contaminating the Al-Matwi valley and devastating Palestinian farmland.[3] Palestinians in nearby villages told Human Rights Watch that they were worried about getting sick from the sewage, with one resident saying that the “smell in the valley is deadly” and revealing that her three-year-old daughter had been diagnosed with leukemia. [4]

In addition to environmental degradation, Palestinian laborers working in the Barkan Industrial Zone have been subjected to exploitative conditions, including being paid below minimum wage and being systematically denied the right to unionize, in violation of international labour standards.[5]

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that “the Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies” and prohibits the “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory.”[6] The establishment of Jewish settlements in the OPT, therefore, constitutes a grave breach of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and is classified as a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. By maintaining operations in these illegal settlements, Keter Plastic and its subsidiary Lipski were not only in flagrant violation of international law but also complicit in the ongoing colonization, systemic exploitation, and dispossession of the Palestinian people.

As a result of boycott pressure, Keter ceased its operations in the OPT in 2014.[7]

Why Should Keter Plastic Still Be Boycotted?

Inspired by the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, the Palestinian Civil Society Call for BDS[8] urges the international community to boycott Israeli products in order to pressure Israel into complying with international law.  By continuing to produce goods in Israel — a state involved in settler colonialism, apartheid, and the occupation of Palestinians — Keter Plastic remains complicit in the systematic oppression of Palestinians.

Moreover, although Keter recently withdrew from the OPT, it does not absolve the company of the profits it reaped from years of complicity in the illegal occupation of Palestinian land. Without addressing this historical injustice, Keter Plastic remains culpable for its prior breaches of international law and its extensive history of exploiting Palestinian land and resources for economic gain.

[1] Keter Group. About Us. Accessed July 15, 2024.

[2] Who Profits. “Keter Plastic Ends its Activity in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”. Accessed July 18, 2024.

[3] Human Rights Watch. “A Threshhold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution.”

[4] Ibid.

[5] International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). “The Situation of Workers in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.” Accessed August 19, 2024.

[6] Amnesty International. "Chapter 3: Israeli Settlements and International Law." January 2019. Accessed July 15, 2024. 

[7] Who Profits. “Keter Plastic Ends its Activity in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”. Accessed July 18, 2024.

[8] Palestinian Civil Society. "Palestinian Civil Society Call for BDS." July 9, 2005. Accessed August 22, 2024.