Arab Knesset party backs Irish bill to criminalize trade with settlements

Ayman Odeh, leader of the Joint List,, with two Joint List MKs

Raoul Wootliff writes in Times of Israel, “Arab Israeli

lawmakers on Wednesday threw their support behind an Irish bill expected to be advanced later in the day that would outlaw the sale and import of settlement-produced goods in Ireland. ‘This is a welcome and legally correct step,’ the Joint (Arab) List party said in a press statement. The Control of Economic Activities (Occupied Territories) Bill 2018 declares it an offense “for a person to import or attempt to import settlement goods. Likewise, those who ‘assist another person to import or attempt to import settlement goods’ would be committing a crime punishable by up to five years in prison, if the bill were to become law.”

“In praising the bill, the Joint List took aim at both Israeli ‘oppression against the Palestinian people’ and what it described as European capitulation to the ‘Zionist lobby.’ The party said that it hoped the passage of the bill would “mark the beginning of a new stage in which Israel starts to pay an international political, economic and moral price for its actions,” and, the statement added,’a new stage in treating the Zionist lobby as a danger to the values that Europe claims to represent.’ While the bill appears to have the support of a majority of Irish lawmakers, the government in Dublin — known an one of the most pro-Palestinian in Europe — is opposed to the law, and has argued that it is not legally entitled to curtail trade with Israeli companies based in the settlements.”…

Irish Parliament building

“The Joint List said that ‘a wave of fascist laws’ being advanced in Israel’s parliament was ‘a direct result of the silence of the world against the crimes of the country. It is time for the world to come to its senses and understand that this is a rogue state,’ the party said, adding that Israel ‘must understand that it deserves all the sanctions, boycotts, and freezing of relations, as punishment for its violent policy and the daily oppression of the Palestinian people.” (more…)