Trade tilts balance in EU-Israeli
ties By Emanuele Scimia
Caught in a spiral of actions and
counteractions, the course of relations between
the European Union (EU) and Israel keeps going up
and down, while on the one hand Brussels scolds
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for not
halting the expansion of Jewish settlements in the
occupied Palestinian territories and, on the
other, the Israeli government speeds up its
integration into the EU single market.
The
European Parliament ratified on October 23 the
EU-Israel Agreement on Conformity Assessment and
Acceptance (ACAA). Being part of the Association
Agreement that the European Union and the Israeli
government stroke in 1995, the new framework deal
matches Europe's and Israel's industrial
standards, most notably with regard to
pharmaceutical products - it is worth remembering
that on July 24 the European Council, the EU's
decision-making
body, already agreed to
upgrade trade and diplomatic relations with Israel
in more than 60 sectors.
Opponents of the
ACAA within the EU's legislative branch - who have
been fighting against its ratification since 2009
- contend that it does not clarify if it comprises
products coming from Israeli settlements.
According to many EU legislators, then, Brussels
cannot accept that the Israeli state regulator
charged with implementing the agreement has
jurisdiction over the West Bank and East
Jerusalem.
What's more, there are fears
that the ACAA's provisions collide with the
European effort to draw up a voluntary code of
conduct for labels on goods being exported by
Jewish settlers. The rationale behind this code is
to empower the Old Continent's consumers, who
could choose whether buying "Made in Israeli
settlements" products or not. Currently, imports
from settlements cannot benefit from EU tax
breaks.
But there is something else. A
group of 22 European NGOs released on October 30 a
report shedding light on the size of EU trade with
illegal Jewish settlements. Based on official
figures from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, the report reveals that EU imports from
Israeli settlers are worth US$300 million per
year, while those from Palestinians in the
occupied territories touch scarcely US$19 million.
The value of EU imports from 500,000
Jewish settlers is roughly 15 times that of
imports from four million Palestinians in the West
Bank and East Jerusalem. Such an imbalance would
prove the incoherence of Europe when it comes to
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the authors of
the study remarked.
They also suggested
that the EU should impose a ban on imports from
settlers, much as on financial transactions with
them. European diplomats in the region have long
since put forward similar proposals, but their
words have largely gone unheeded before the
barrage of Israel's friends within the EU - Italy,
Netherlands, Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Romania.
For the European Union, Israeli
settlements in the territories that are destined
to form the long-awaited Palestinian state are
illegal under the international law. EU
institutions, Britain and France have officially
condemned Israeli government's recent green light
to 797 new housing units in the Jewish settlement
of Gilo, in East Jerusalem. In the view of the EU
high representative for foreign affairs, Catherine
Ashton, Gilo's expansion would concur to cut East
Jerusalem off from the rest of the West Bank and,
in turn, further undermine the two-state way
forward.
Yet another topic that is marring
the current state of the Euro-Israeli relationship
is the demolition by Israeli authorities of
Palestinian-built structures in Area C of the West
Bank. The new Action Plan that sets out the
targets of bilateral relations between the
European Union and the Palestinian Authority (PA)
over the next five years, that Palestinian Prime
Minister Salam Fayyad and Baroness Ashton signed
on October 24, provides for a priority: promoting
the inclusive development in Area C.
According to the 1993 Oslo Agreement,
which set the stage for the two-state solution of
the Israeli-Palestinian crisis along the lines
fixed after the 1967 Six-Day War, Area C (that is,
more than 60% of the Palestinian territories)
should have ended up under the PA administration
by 1999. To date the civilian and security control
of these lands is still in the hands of the
Israeli government.
The European
Commission and the United Nations highlighted in
May that Israeli authorities in 2011 had
demolished 622 Palestinian structures in East
Jerusalem and the West Bank. As many as 62 of them
had been funded by EU member states, not least
water cisterns and residential and agricultural
constructions within the Area C. From 2001 to
2011, Israel wiped out EU projects in Palestine
worth US$64 million, something that European
taxpayers cannot take light-heartedly in the midst
of a deep economic crisis at home.
The Old
Continent is Israel's main trading partner with a
total trade of about US$39 billion in 2011, and
for many EU officials it should assert its
commercial heft in forcing the Israeli leaders to
comply with the rules of international law and the
Oslo Accords.
However, the strategy of
using trade diplomacy as a bargaining chip with
Israel fails to take heed of the United States'
role in the process. No doubt that Washington,
Israel's second-largest commercial partner, would
fill the void created by a potential EU ban on
Israeli exports, no matter who is in the Oval
Office, Democrat or Republican. And China and
India would follow suit immediately afterwards.
Then, the European Union is being torn
apart at all levels by internal divisions over the
official position that the block should adopt to
deal with Israel. EU diplomats on the ground,
along with numerous NGOs, urge the European
institutions to take a harder stance against the
Israeli leadership, but in vain. European
countries fight on one another over whether or not
the EU should blacklist Hezbollah as a terrorist
outfit - at this time, Brussels ranks the Lebanese
organization as a socio-political movement.
Even peripheral administrations of single
EU countries have their own say on the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For instance,
France's most populous administrative zone,
Ile-de-France, encompassing the capital Paris, has
recently promoted a cooperation agreement with the
Palestinian district of Jerusalem. All in the name
of the feudal-style entropy characterizing today's
European Union.
Emanuele Scimia
is a journalist and geopolitical analyst based in
Rome.
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