Barkan Industrial Park

Israeli industrial park in the West Bank

The Barkan Industrial Park (, lit. Barkan Industrial Area) is located about 25 kilometres east of Tel Aviv in the West Bank. Its offices are located at the northern entrance. The industrial park is located adjacent to the Israeli settlement Barkan and near the settlement and city of Ariel. A January 2016 report by Human Rights Watch called for companies to pull out from the West Bank since the study says that these companies, including Barkan Industrial Park, violate international law by harming the rights of the Palestinians. However, others contend that the industrial zone is a major source of employment for Palestinian workers. In 1998 Barkan factories generated an estimated 810,000 cubic meters of industrial wastewater, which flowed untreated from the three storage tanks, after a design defect made them nonoperational when overloaded, into a nearby wadi into the agricultural lands of the Palestinian villages of Sarta, Kafr ad Dik and Bruqin, and reportedly polluting the groundwater with heavy metals.

It is one of 15 industrial zones set up in the West Bank, providing jobs to Palestinians, and money to their economy, while occupying vast amounts of land that the Palestinians see as part of their future state. and since has expanded to cover over 1,300 dunams (about 325 acres) (2013). According to Mohammad Chaichian, the practice of industrial zones like Barkan in the West Bank gives Palestinians, for whom work permits in Israel are restricted, no option but to accept work in what he calls "Economic prison zones". By 2008 the park's industries were affected by rising pressure in Europe, from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, for companies to withdraw their involvement in the park. The partly Dutch owned Barkan Wine Cellars drew up stakes there and moved its facilities to kibbutz Hulda. In October 2008, following the Dutch lead, the Swedish company Assa Abloy, responding in turn to appeals from the Church of Sweden and other groups, announced that it would move its production plant belonging to their Israeli subsidiary Mul T Lock from Barkan, and relocate inside Israel.