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The Saker Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.
Public InquiryInterested in maladministration. Estd. 2005
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British to tax imports from Illegal Israeli Settlements national |
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news report
 Friday April 04, 2003 13:52 by kokomero
 Better still if they banned them altogether! Tony Blair's government tightened the screws on Israel's illegal West Bank settlements yesterday by warning British food and agricultural importers that they will now be liable for taxes on zero-rated goods which are not genuinely Israeli. Less than 10% of Israel's farms exports are said to emanate from the West Bank, but such goods are used to defray the heavy cost of subsidising the settlements from Palestinian attacks. For instance a lone settler occupying a hilltop in the West Bank illegally is being guarded by 6 troops to the tune of $27,000 a month! Your money is going to subsidise illegal settlements and ethnic cleansing if you buy Israeli goods! Boycott Israel! It will be interesting to see when Ireland follows the British lead in implementing this EU initiative.
Michael White, political editor Tony Blair's government tightened the screws on Israel's illegal West Bank settlements yesterday by warning British food and agricultural importers that they will now be liable for taxes on zero-rated goods which are not genuinely Israeli. John Healey, the economic secretary in Gordon Brown's team, said that the latest agreement between Israel and the EU to provide zero-rates of duty on Israeli products does not extend to goods originating in territories occupied during the 1967 war, including Gaza and the West Bank. "These settlements are illegal under international law, they are not part of Israel," one Labour MP said yesterday. "By buying such goods we are subsidising these settlements." Less than 10% of Israel's farms exports are said to emanate from the West Bank, but such goods are used to defray the heavy cost of subsidising the settlements from Palestinian attacks. Mr Healey told MPs that zero-rating may be denied "where there is reasonable doubt as to entitlement". Israel has not denied certifying goods from the West Bank as Israeli. The EU is also tightening up its controls. Britain's active role in persuading President George Bush to embrace the "road map" to restore the Middle East peace process - as part of the US regional strategy against Iraq - has prompted hostile commentary in Tel Aviv. Mr Healey said that Israel had failed to prove the legitimacy of goods suspected of coming from the occupied territories. "Customs and excise have now begun issuing duty demands to UK importers where there is reason to suspect that goods may have originated in Israeli settlements in the occupied territories," he said. Israel will still be able to export goods produced in settlements, but they will not be eligible for the special rates of duty.
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Jump To Comment: 2 1He was killed for trying to mediate.
http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_independence_bernadotte.php
UN Security Council Resolution 242, calls on the parties to make peace and allows Israel to administer the territories it occupied in 1967 until "a just and lasting peace in the Middle East" is achieved. When such a peace is made, Israel is required to withdraw its armed forces "from territories" it occupied during the Six-Day War--not from "the" territories nor from "all" the territories, but from some of the territories, which included the Sinai Desert, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.
Five-and-a-half months of vehement public diplomacy in 1967 made it perfectly clear what the missing definite article in Resolution 242 means. Ingeniously drafted resolutions calling for withdrawals from "all" the territories were defeated in the Security Council and the General Assembly. Speaker after speaker made it explicit that Israel was not to be forced back to the "fragile" and "vulnerable" Armistice Demarcation Lines, but should retire once peace was made to what Resolution 242 called "secure and recognized" boundaries, agreed to by the parties. In negotiating such agreements, the parties should take into account, among other factors, security considerations, access to the international waterways of the region, and, of course, their respective legal claims.
Resolution 242 built on the text of the Armistice Agreements of 1949, which provided (except in th case of Lebanon) that the Armistice Demarcation Lines separating the military forces were "not to be construed in any sense" as political or territorial boundaries, and that "no provision" of the Armistice Agreements "Shall in any way prejudice the right, claims, and positions" of the parties "in the ultimate peaceful settlement of the Palestine problem." In making peace with Egypt in 1979, Israel withdrew from the entire Sinai, which had never been part of the British Mandate.
For security it depended on patrolled demilitarisation and the huge area of the desert rather than on territorial change. As a result, more than 90 percent of the territories Israel occupied in 1967 are now under Arab sovereignty. It is hardly surprising that some Israelis take the view that such a transfer fulfills the territorial requirements of Resolution 242, no matter how narrowly they are construed.
Resolution 242 leaves the issue of dividing the occupied areas between Israel and its neighbors entirely to the agreement of the parties in accordance with the principles it sets out. It was, however, negotiated with full realization that the problem of establishing "a secure and recognized" boundary between Israel and Jordan would be the thorniest issue of the peace-making process. The United States has remained firmly opposed to the creation of a third Palestinian state on the territory of the Palestine Mandate. An independent Jordan or a Jordan linked in an economic union with Israel is desirable from the point of view of everybody's security and prosperity. And a predominantly Jewish Israel is one of the fundamental goals of Israeli policy. It should be possible to reconcile these goals by negotiation, especially if the idea of an economic union is accepted.
The Arabs of the West Bank could constitute the population of an autonomous province of Jordan or of Israel, depending on the course of the negotations. Provisions for a shift of populations or, better still, for individual self-determination are a possible solution for those West Bank Arabs who would prefer to live elsewhere.
The heated question of Israel's settlements in the West Bank during the occupation period should be viewed in this perspective. The British Mandate recognized the right of the Jewish people to "close settlement" in the whole of the Mandated territory. It was provided that local conditions might require Great Britain to "postpone" or "withhold" Jewish settlement in what is now Jordan. This was done in 1992. But the Jewish right of settlement in Palestine west of the Jordan river, that is, in Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, was made unassailable. That right has never been terminated and cannot be terminated except by a recognized peace between Israel and its neighbors. And perhaps not even then, in view of Article 80 of the U.N. Charter, "the Palestine article," which provides that "nothing in the Charter shall be construed ... to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments...."