EU guidelines on settlement products out next week

In this posting Barak Ravid 1] and John Reed 3] assess the nature and impact of EC guidelines on settlement products. A map showing settlements on occupied Palestinian land is in the middle.Links to some other articles on this topic at foot.

Palestinians work in an onion field in the Israeli settlement of Tomer, Jordan Valley, 2014. Photo by Oded Balilty / AP.

EU to Issue Settlement Product Labelling Guidelines Next Week, Senior Israeli Officials Say

Neither the Foreign Ministry nor the Prime Minister’s Office has practically any detail on the contents of the new guidelines, which at this stage are closely-guarded.

Barak Ravid, Haaretz
November 02, 2015

The European Union is expected to issue new  guidelines on November 11 regarding the labelling of products from West Bank settlements that are sold by European retail chains, senior officials in Jerusalem said.

Neither the Foreign Ministry nor the Prime Minister’s Office have practically any detail on the contents of the new  guidelines, which at this stage are closely-guarded and only known to a limited group of officials at European Union headquarters in Brussels.

In recent months, collection of information about the guidelines has been a top priority at the Israeli embassies in the 28 countries of the EU. But despite the major effort to learn what the label guidelines will provide, virtually no relevant information has been obtained. That, senior officials in Jerusalem have said, is because of the meticulous manner in which work on the document has been kept out of reach of those who have not needed access to its content.

The officials said they thought a group of fewer than ten people at the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU in Brussels, have had access to the document. Work on the document is being carried out in a locked room on a computer without an Internet connection, according to reports obtained by the Foreign Ministry from European diplomats.

At this stage, no one in Israel and almost no one in the European Union has details on the document, said the senior Israeli officials, who asked that they not be identified due to the diplomatic sensitivity of the matter. They said they have been unsuccessfully trying for a long period of time to obtain the details and added that even the most senior officials of major European countries don’t have them.

The labelling guidelines had been due to be released a month ago, but the wave of terrorist attacks in Jerusalem and elsewhere in Israel caused their publication to be delayed. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini had not wanted to release the information while Israelis were being murdered in the streets by Palestinians, senior Israeli officials noted.

On the other hand, the Israeli officials said Mogherini is under heavy pressure from several European countries, such as France and Sweden, to issue the guidelines on settlement product labeling and not delay their publication further. The monthly meeting of EU foreign ministers is to be held on November 16, and apparently Mogherini is interested in releasing the guidelines before that.

In recent months, she has met twice with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and has also spoken to him by telephone on several additional occasions. In each instance, Netanyahu has asked her to defer the release of the guidelines in light of the escalation in the security situation. In addition, the Israeli prime minister has asked British Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel to intervene to halt the release of the guidelines, but they told him that the die had been cast and the process could not be stopped.

A senior Israeli official said that Israel is still working to convince the European Union and its member states that this is a mistake, which has a clear element of discrimination, and which does not help at all with the peace process. “The European guidelines for labelling goods from the settlements are a prize for terror and Palestinian refusal,” the senior official said. “In addition, they encourage an atmosphere of boycott against Israel. We hope that the Israeli effort will succeed and that Europe will understand the uselessness of these guidelines.”

The Jordan valley is the white area on the right of the map.

Jordan Valley settlers angry at EU plans to label goods

John Reed in the Jordan Valley, Financial Times
November 03, 2015

In recent weeks, farmers in the Jordan Valley have been harvesting this season’s crop of medjool dates, the lush green of their irrigated farms standing in stark contrast to the surrounding desert.

The land on which the area’s signature product are grown — mostly on Jewish settlement farms — is viewed by the international community as territory illegally occupied by Israel.

As soon as next week, Israeli and European officials expect the EU to decide on new guidelines for its member states to begin labelling goods made in settlements — including the Jordan Valley’s dates, figs and herbs — to differentiate them from those made inside Israel’s internationally recognised borders. What many Europeans might see as a bureaucratic initiative is creating a furore among settlers and Israeli government officials.

Farmers and settler leaders have greeted the labelling plans with a mixture of anger, dismissal and defiance. They say they have already found new markets for the products elsewhere, as European supermarkets and other buyers began shunning their products in recent years.

They use the word “boycott” to describe the labelling measures, as do some Israeli government officials, conflating the impending move with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement calling for Israel’s economic isolation over its occupation of Palestinian lands.

“They [the EU] don’t just want to boycott the West Bank product, they want to boycott all of Israel,” says David Elhaiini, mayor of the local council.

Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s far-right deputy foreign minister, on Tuesday lashed out at the planned measures, describing the settlements — which are against international law — as “regions of Israel” and claiming that labelling settlement-made products would pave the way for a broader boycott of all Israeli goods.

The settlement-irrigated green patches of the Jordan valley as seen from the Mount of Temptation, Jericho. Photo by Alamy

“Whoever is trying to boycott certain regions of Israel is basically boycotting the state itself and creating delegitimisation of the state,” Ms Hotovely told journalists at a briefing at a settlement factory in the West Bank. “When you boycott Judea and Samaria,” she added, using the phrase many Israelis use for the West Bank, “you eventually boycott Tel Aviv”.

Ms Hotovely will leave on Thursday for a trip to Spain, Germany and France to lobby against the planned labelling measures.

EU officials deny that settlement product labelling amounts to a boycott, and say the measures are meant to inform consumers and uphold EU law.

However, European countries are the biggest donors to the Palestinian Authority and the move will reflect in part diplomats’ frustration with a frozen peace process. Palestinians have welcomed the planned move, saying it would help prospects for a two-state solution.

Do you know what is absurd? Palestinians buy dates from us to sell to Qatar; they change the boxes so nobody knows where they come from
– David Elhaiini, local mayor

the EU is Israel’s biggest trading partner, the direct economic impact of the move will probably be small.

EU officials say settlement goods, only some of which would be subject to labelling, account for about €200m of Israeli exports to the EU, less than 1 per cent of the total.

Supermarkets in the UK, which introduced settlement labelling guidelines in 2009, already mark products from farms in the area “West Bank (Israeli settlement)” and “West Bank (Palestinian product)” respectively. Denmark and Belgium have similar guidelines.

The supermarkets’ move prompted Israeli farmers in the Jordan Valley, many of whom settled in the area following the 1967 Six day war, to shift their sales to new markets including Russia, the US and Canada. Russia, which has to source more of its food from outside the EU since the imposition of sanctions over the Ukraine conflict, has been a particular willing buyer.

“They [Europe] have been boycotting us for many years,” says Chanan Pasternak, a farmer who grows peppers in the settlement of Netiv Hagdud.

However, Mr Elhaiini says the weak rouble and lower prices on the Russian market have cost Jordan Valley farmers an estimated €100m relative to what they would have fetched in Europe. The industry produces about 700m shekels of goods a year.
Others say their medjool dates are quietly being shipped to customers in markets hostile to Israel — including Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip — through Arab or Turkish middlemen.

“Do you know what is absurd?” Mr Elhaiini asks. “Palestinians buy dates from us to sell to Qatar; they change the boxes so nobody knows where they come from. Even the Palestinians don’t boycott our dates. It’s kind of a hypocrisy.”

Another farmer suggested that after the EU guidelines were published, he might sell to Europe the same way. It is unclear whether the EU would be able to keep track of, much less stop, such sales.

Ultimately, farmers say that labelling settlement-produced goods will hurt the 6,000 Palestinian day workers they employ — a charge also levelled against the BDS movement as it pressured companies such as SodaStream to close settlement factories in the West Bank.

Ms Hotovely said on Tuesday that labelling would endanger the livelihood of 10,000 Palestinian families who have members working at settlement factories or farms.
Whatever happens, the Jordan Valley farmers insist they will not be going anywhere. “You can do whatever you want to do,” says Mr Elhaiini. “We will stay here, we will live, we will grow. Europe is not the only area that can buy our product.”

Links

Opposition, government unite against EU settlement product plans, Ynet, November 4th 2015

MK Oren labels EU products at supermarket in protest over anticipated guidelines, JPost, November 4th, 2015

Israel to EU: Labelling products harms peace hopes, Euractiv.com, November 4th, 2015