New European guidelines would require Israel to label products made in Judea and Samaria and exported to Europe • Israeli officials: This amounts to a type of boycott and discourages Palestinians from returning to peace talks.
Associated Press and Israel Hayom Staff
Israel would be required to label products that are made in Judea and Samaria and exported to Europe under guidelines being prepared by the European Union.
The move is the latest sign of international discontent with Israeli construction in Judea and Samaria, as well as frustration over the bleak state of Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.
It also comes as a grassroots movement promoting boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel appears to be gaining steam.
Israeli officials reject the European labeling plan, saying it would amount to a type of boycott and help discourage Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas from returning to peace negotiations.
An EU official said Tuesday the 28-nation bloc’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, told European foreign ministers on May 18 that work was underway and that a set of guidelines would be “finalized in the near future.”
The Palestinians claim Judea and Samaria and east Jerusalem — territories taken by Israel from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War — as parts of a future independent state. The international community opposes Israeli construction in these areas, saying it undermines the goal of dividing the land between two countries. More than 550,000 Israelis live in Judea and Samaria and easy Jerusalem.
EU opposition to Israeli settlements is not new. A free-trade agreement with Israel already excludes settlement goods, even if they say they were made in Israel. Likewise, Israel is barred from spending money it receives under a landmark technology-sharing pact in Judea and Samaria or east Jerusalem. Several European countries have approved voluntary labeling guidelines for settlement products.
The new guidelines would take things further by requiring Israeli exporters to explicitly label products as being made in the settlements — a potential stigma that could deter consumers from buying them. The EU began work on labeling guidelines in 2012, but appears to have decided to revive that effort following the formation of Israel’s new government.
The EU official said it would likely be months before the guidelines are complete. A second official said much would depend on the policies of the new government. If peace talks with the Palestinians are restarted, the effort could once again be shelved. But if talks remain frozen and Israel steps up settlement construction, the EU will move forward, he said. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal EU deliberations with the media.
For now, the odds of Israel and the Palestinians relaunching peace talks appear slim.
The Palestinians have been moving forward with a campaign against Israel in international organizations like the United Nations and the International Criminal Court. Two weeks ago, Israel fended off a Palestinian attempt to expel Israel from FIFA, the global soccer federation.
At the same time, the grassroots pro-Palestinian boycott movement, known by its initials BDS, appears to be gaining strength. Last week, Britain’s national student union endorsed the BDS movement, while the chief executive of French telecom giant Orange said he wanted to cut business ties with Israel to help gain favor with the Arab world.
Orange CEO Stephane Richard subsequently backtracked, telling France’s BFM television station Monday that his decision was only a business move and he is “radically opposed to all forms of discrimination.”
The station said Richard planned to go to Israel soon to speak to the nation’s leaders. But the uproar in Israel has not subsided.
Politicians across Israel’s political spectrum have blasted the BDS movement, and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked (Habayit Hayehudi) said Thursday she had ordered experts to plan legal steps against it. “In this arena, we will move from the defense to the offense,” she said.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the global pressure on Israel was undermining hopes of resuming talks.
“The Palestinians have a nifty trick up their sleeve, they refuse to negotiate and then get international pressure, sanctions, boycotts on Israel for there not being negotiations,” he said. “It’s the perfect Catch-22.”
An EU labeling effort would deliver an especially tough diplomatic blow. In contrast to the BDS movement, whose leaders often voice hatred of Israel, Western European countries are among Israel’s closest allies.
Europe also is Israel’s largest trade market, importing about $14.7 billion in goods last year, according to EU figures. Products from the settlements, including wines, honey, cosmetics and agricultural produce, make up just 1.5 percent of that total, according to the Finance Ministry.
“If Europe begins labeling settlement products, then this will mean that they have put their political position into effect in the sense that there will be a real and true boycott of settlement goods,” said Mohammed Shtayyeh, the Palestinian cabinet minister in charge of economic development.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said Israel fears that consumers will not differentiate between settlement products and Israeli products.
“It will be a de facto boycott against Israel,” he said.
Nahshon said Israel is in “close contact and dialogue” with the EU on the matter.
“We have been conveying our positions, and we hope they will be accepted by the EU,” he said.
Israel has traditionally used its closest allies in Europe, such as Britain and Germany, to blunt EU decisions, which require a consensus.
Regardless of what the EU’s executive arm decides on labeling, its member states remain divided about what to do, said Pierre Vimont, a former top EU official who is a senior associate at Carnegie Europe, a Brussels-based think tank.
“Preparation has been going now on for two years, and we are more than ready to go ahead,” he said in a recent interview. “But we have been avoiding this difficult moment because we know member states are split, and it could be a very ugly discussion among us. At the end of the day, this could be the tricky issue.”
mar55 Said:
🙂 thanks for the compliment, but I never attended law. through the years I have dealt with many contracts and lawyers. Other than a course in real estate law in the 80’s my greatest legal education was a wonderful high school business law course in the 50’s.
CuriousAmerican Said:
Your attempts to paint a fig leaf on the current collaboration and focus of the two largest expressions of modern european culture, church and state, to libel, swindle and incite against Israel as a proxy for the Jews while they fund Jew killers is patently absurd and dishonest. You cannot remove todays behavior from the 2000 years of the same serial behavior. Had the euro lunatics changed, had they not been doing what they now do, you might have some argument; but their latest incarnations of lunacy have put paid to reality and drove the nail home in the coffin of their obvious disease. There is no rational explanation for the congruence of today’s behavior with the past 2000 years, the congruence is both irrational and uncanny.
CuriousAmerican Said:
they cannot control their cyclical werewolf predispositions. They are pathologically dangerous to the Jews and their rationalizations and reasons confuse the Jews just as you do here.
CuriousAmerican Said:
Not complicated once you realize that irrational serial behavior is best explained by disease.
CuriousAmerican Said:
stockholm syndrome, appeasing the werewolf lunatic who might kill them at any moment. self preservation at an unconscious level.
CuriousAmerican Said:
todays euro lunatic cycle reinforces the past 2000 years of behavior………
you attempt to trivialize the elephant of their disease which HAS NEVER BEEN IN HIATUS .
CuriousAmerican Said:
Not wannabe, they are collective nazis, serially. you cannot honestly compare individual Jews in this genration to 2000 years of church and state eurostalking of Jews ongoingas I write. there has been no hiatus in this behavior, it continued after the holocaust more covertly and is simply now agian repating the cycle and emerging from the closet.
CuriousAmerican Said:
you are indeed insane if you compare one Jew as the greatest of the blood libelers today when euro churches and euro secular govs collaborate to libel Israel and fund the honor killing Jew killers.
CuriousAmerican Said:
There is nothing “knee jerk” about a 2000 year repeated euro behavior which is daily corroborated by today’s behavior of euro church and state. This insane lunatic obsession even causes them to ignore the slaughters of their supposed christian brother, the destruction of their churches, the driving out of the christians form the ME by the same pets they fund to kill the Jews. their insanity and denial is so pronounced that they are willing to destroy themselves n order to destroy the Jews. It is not rational, it is disease, addiction whereby they become insanely rabid and out of control.
CuriousAmerican Said:
What is wrong with insulting christianity, its continuing behavior is deplorable. Not all are infected it appears that the euros are highly infected with lunacy and the americans much less but interestingly the adherents of the mother churches are more prone. they are likely more directly descended from the lunatic forebears with less intermarriage to breed out the disease.
CuriousAmerican Said:
Its not conscious, it is an uncontrollable and unconscious addiction. Their conscious minds have repressed the urge but it proves too great for them to control. the cheat the Jew naturally, no thought necessary. Its in their DNA.
CuriousAmerican Said:
LOROFLMAO. Pure lies. they recognized the historic rights of Jews to return to the homeland from which they were exiled by europeans. See how you do the same as they do, your memory has blotted out what they actually saw when they, not Israel or the Jews, created the Balfour declaration. they declared for themselves but the facts of jewish history, as described in the bible they hijacked and revised to cast themselves as the chosen, are clear. Why do you serially tell lies and libel the Jews?
CuriousAmerican Said:
Baloney, the euros are the prime inciters of the arabs, they fund them and they instill the narrative in their mouths to parrot. They come to Israel to make sure the arabs do what they instruct.
the lunatic “esau incites ishmael to murder jacob”
I would not be surprised to see in the future the following”
“Ishmael beleives that esau is insane”
Indeed, they are insane and it is important for the Jews to think on this concept because it will make them realize the truth that one cannot reason with a lunatic.
CuriousAmerican Said:
Of course they are to be faulted because their pretend legal reason are proven false as uttered by their double standard in not applying it to others or themselves. When dealing with irrational lunatics one cannot be straight forward.
CuriousAmerican Said:
😛 😛 😛 Law cannot be applied unequally, it is merely a rationalization to stalk the Jews. Of course you must be faulted as we are all familiar with your repeated MO here where, like the euros, you rationalize the expressions of a serial disease.
CuriousAmerican Said:
On the contrary, the root problem is the serial pathological obsession of the euros to libel, swindle, torture, abuse and slaughter the Jews and their fig leaf for their disease is directing it at Israel.
CuriousAmerican Said:
excellent observation by Ross 🙂
CuriousAmerican Said:
NO, but the collective behavior is Nazi, just like all germans were not nazis in action. therefore, your comment is meaningless defacto.
CuriousAmerican Said:
Indeed, many Jews are infected with an expression of diaspora Stockholm syndrome, the effects of 2000 years of serial abuse from the europeans and their churches. DNA studies indicate that this could have altered their DNA. But more than that it is clearly a typical reaction of an oppressed minority to paint himself to the extreme as a patriot.
You are indeed dishonest to quote the behavior of various individual Jews and pretend that it is the same as the 2000 year consistent repetitive behavior of the European churches and the european states govs. the weight of the onslaught of those two most major collective institutions over 2000 years must produce an innate fear even if subconscious.
this is your usual dishonest MO.