Jews use tricks to escape inspection measures and deceive end-users
My Name
By Mohammed Assadi
SALFIT, West Bank (Reuters) - Prime Minister Salam Fayyad
threw a box of settler products on a bonfire this week as
Palestinians pushed a campaign to "cleanse" their markets of
goods made by Israelis living in the West Bank.
Fayyad said if Palestinians wanted to persuade the European
Union to ban trade with the settlements -- considered
illegal under international law -- they would have to do it
themselves first.
Fayyad's government has confiscated merchandise worth $2
million since November.
"This is a merciless campaign and there will be a zero
tolerance for those who deal with this trade," said
Abdelhafiz Nofal, a senior official at the Palestinian
economy ministry.
The campaign does not include products from Israel proper,
which Palestinians rely on. Campaigns by some local groups
to boycott all trade with Israel have had very little
success.
Palestinian officials estimate that Israel-run companies in
the settlements sell goods worth $500 million per year into
the West Bank market, from construction materials to nuts.
Cutting off this trade will undermine settler viability in
the Israeli-occupied territories that Palestinians want for
a state, the campaigners believe.
"This is an expression of our rejection to settlement
activity in all its forms," said Fayyad as fire consumed a
heap of goods at Salfit, a West Bank town ringed by
settlements which include industrial operations.
If Palestinians are allowed to carry on buying settler
goods, they will "cement the economic activity of
settlements and settlers," he said.
"What we are looking for is to have a state without
settlements and without walls and what we are doing in
Salfit is an important step on this path," Fayyad said.
LIST OF 50 PRODUCTS
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas refuses to resume
stalled peace talks with Israel until it freezes West Bank
settlements. Israel in November ordered a partial, 10-month
freeze but is still building some new homes on occupied
land.
The Palestinian campaign targets over 50 products. Customs
officers can seize merchandise already on the shelves of
Palestinian shops if they can prove it is settler-made.
Settler firms use tricks to escape inspection measures and
deceive end-users, Nofal said. Boxes of dates being shipped
to Turkey bore labels showing Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock,
to make them look Islamic and Palestinian-grown.
Under an EU-Israel Association Agreement, settlement goods
from the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights are
not entitled to preferential tariff treatment that Israeli
products enjoy and are subject to the payment of duties.
In 2005, the EU and Israel negotiated a "technical
arrangement" under which customs authorities of member
states may identify settlement exports to the EU. This is
implemented homogeneously in the whole EU territory, an EU
official said.
Britain was criticized by Israel in December for advising
supermarkets to label produce from Jewish settlements
clearly, to distinguish it from goods produced by
Palestinians.
But Palestinians believe lots of settler output is slipping
through the net, benefiting from preferential trade
agreements intended strictly for Israeli exports.
"Settlement activity is illegal," said Fayyad, a former
World Bank economist. "Anything that goes into supporting
this enterprise is illegal and this brings with it a measure
of accountability that countries around the world and their
nationals are beginning to understand better."
(Additional reporting by Brussels bureau; editing by Douglas
Hamilton and Charles Dick)
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/100108/world/international_us_palestinians_israel_trade
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