“The opposite is the case – it is bound to reinforce the PA’s refusal to conduct direct negotiations with Israel, negotiations that the European Union claims to support”, the Foreign Ministry said.
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A Palestinian related to a man suspected of being behind an anti-Israeli attack was killed by undercover Israeli agents in a West Bank hospital on Wednesday night, Palestinian and Israeli sources said.
The move is unlikely to have any significant economic impact on Israel.
The EU’s decision to proceed on guidelines years in the making came after several member states, and its own Parliament, formally or symbolically recognized an independent Palestinian state. Those resolutions reflect mounting frustration in Europe over the stalemated peace process and the growing political pressure on leaders in countries with large Muslim populations sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.
Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Syria’s Golan Heights in the 1967 Mideast war and began settling the areas shortly afterward. More than 550,000 Jewish settlers live on occupied land.
The Israeli military did not provide additional details of the operation, or say whether the troops were undercover.
In spite of what EU officials stated earlier, the commission said the aim of the labeling was also “to ensure the respect of the Union’s positions and commitments in conformity with worldwide law on the non-recognition by the Union of Israel’s sovereignty over the territories occupied by Israel since June 1967”.
But “products coming from the settlements can not benefit from those preferences”, the spokesman said.
“We regret that the European Union has chosen, for political reasons, to take such an exceptional and discriminatory step, inspired by the boycott movement, particularly at this time, when Israel is confronting a wave of terrorism targeting any and all of its citizens”, the Israeli foreign ministry said, referring to a wave of stabbling attacks by Palestinians on Israelis. “This is something that also happens to be the view of 99 percent of the global community”, he said in Jerusalem.
He added that “the European Union has once again moved from the level of statements to taking concrete policy decisions”.
For packaged food and other products it is voluntary, unless its omission misleads the consumer into believing that the product was produced in Israel.
Mandatory indication of origin or labelling includes products such as fresh fruits, vegetables, wine, honey, olive oil, eggs, poultry and organic products as well as cosmetics. It adds that enforcement of this notice is the responsibility of individual states. The new standard is optional for packaged foods and industrial products. “Those products should not only be labeled, but should be banned”.
As Israeli leaders have said, Schwammenthal stressed the singling out of Israel from among the world’s nations regarding the labeling of products from disputed territories.
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Labeling such goods as “product from Golan Heights” or “product from West Bank” would not be specific enough and therefore would not be acceptable, the commission said.
