Carrefour deepens Israel expansion, supplying security ministry amid boycott calls

Carrefour is accelerating its expansion in Israel, moving beyond ordinary retail into direct provisioning for the Ministry of Security, amid mounting international scrutiny and legal challenges over corporate complicity in the Israeli occupation and war on Gaza.

The French company recently won a tender from the Israeli Ministry of Security to supply foodstuffs worth around 35 million Israeli shekels (~$10 million)  per year to the ministry’s hospitality lounges, according to the Israeli newspaper Calcalist.

The outlet reported that Global Retail, the company that operates Carrefour in Israel, had signed an agreement to acquire 70 percent of the Israeli company Free Market for 19 million shekels ($5.4 million).

With Free Market specialising in distributing and marketing in the corporate wholesale market, the expansion of operations is expected to allow Carrefour to sell to food outlets in kibbutzim (cooperative settlements), moshavim (rural settlements run by settler farmers), nursing homes, offices, cafes, and other businesses.

BDS target

According to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, the multinational Carrefour Group, headquartered in France, signed in March 2022 a franchise agreement with Electra Consumer Products and its subsidiary Yeinot Bitan, both Israeli companies with operations servicing Israeli settlements.

In July 2024, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel’s very presence in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as well as the settlements it builds on confiscated Palestinian land, are illegal, and that it is prohibited to provide any support to, or recognition of, this situation.

In December 2022, the Palestinian National Committee for the Boycott of Israel called for a boycott of Carrefour Group until it cancels the franchise agreement it concluded with the Israeli firms, and until it stops selling all products from Israeli settlements in the thousands of hypermarkets and grocery stores it operates around the world.

The BDS movement pointed out that during the genocide in Gaza, one Carrefour store in occupied Jerusalem organized a fundraising campaign to support Israeli soldiers participating in the genocide.

Although the French group reassured its shareholders that it had not opened stores bearing its brand name in the territories occupied in 1967, the BDS movement says evidence indicates that there is at least one branch in Modi’in–Maccabim–Re’ut, a settlement which the United Nations and the European Union classify as being partly located in the occupied Palestinian territories.