EU acts on goods from settlements
Ambassador called in to office of prime minister and chastised
ON WEDNESDAY the European Commission (EC) announced that all goods produced in Israel’s settlements in the West Bank will now be labelled as originating in the settlements.
Hitherto all these goods were labelled as “produced in Israel”.
This will boost the international Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel by giving Europeans a choice on whether to support Israeli settlements economically.
However, although Palestinians welcome the move, some say it is insufficient.
“This move doesn’t go far enough. It’s too little and too late. No settlement produce should be entering Europe at all,” said Issa Amro from Youth Against Settlements.
The settlements, illegal under international law, have been built on either privately owned Palestinian land or occupied territory earmarked for a future Palestinian state by the UN.
Following the EC’s announcement Lars Faabord-Andersen, the EU ambassador to Israel, was summoned into Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office and chastised. Netanyahu further accused the EU of hypocrisy.
The EU’s new guidelines for the labelling of settler produce, and which will apply to the EU’s 28 member states, state that the organisation does not recognise Israeli sovereignty beyond the June 1967 borders irrespective of Israeli law on the occupied territories.
Further bad news for Israel followed Wednesday’s developments with Washington officially rejecting Netanyahu’s suggestion, during talks with US President Barack Obama earlier in the week, that the US recognise Israel’s annexation of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
The international community have never recognised Israel’s 1981 annexation of the Golan Heights.
Meanwhile, as Israelis absorbed international criticism aimed at ending their occupation of Palestine, thousands of Palestinian protesters battled Israeli security forces during protests across the West Bank and East Jerusalem on Wednesday commemorating the death of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Abdullah Shalaldeh, 28, was shot dead yesterday morning by undercover Israeli forces during a confrontation after they raided a hospital in Hebron in the southern West Bank.
His wounded cousin Azam Shalaldeh, 20, was arrested from his hospital bed shortly after, with the Israeli authorities accusing him of stabbing and injuring an Israeli last week.
In other West Bank towns and villages, another 150 Palestinians were shot with either live ammunition or rubber-coated metal bullets.
Hundreds more suffered teargas inhalation and beatings. The protesters hurled rocks and petrol bombs while the Israeli soldiers fired teargas, rubber bullets and live ammunition. – Reuters