BRIGHTON (UK), March 28, 2010 (WAFA)- British companies are still buying produce from Jewish settlements and illegally labelling it as ‘Produce of Israel’. Two researchers from the UK found herbs for the Oxfordshire based Fresh Direct company, in Mehola settlement, Brighton Tubas Friendship and Solidarity Group (BTFSG) said in an email sent to WAFA.
Therezia, one of the researchers, said: “Despite increased publicity regarding the labelling of Israeli settlement produce, and the recent DEFRA guidance on the matter which states that produce from the settlements should be labelled as such, it only took us a few minutes inside the illegal Jordan Valley settlement of Mehola to find herbs bound for a British company being mislabelled.”
The DEFRA advice regarding labelling of settlement produce, published in December 2009, is clear about the illegality of this practice: “the Government considers that traders would be misleading consumers, and would therefore almost be certainly committing an offence, if they were to declare produce from the OPT (including from the West Bank) as ‘Produce of Israel’. This would apply irrespective of whether the produce was from a Palestinian producer or from an Israeli settlement in the OPT. This is because the area does not fall within the internationally recognised borders of the state of Israel.”
More recently, on February 25, 2010, the European Union high court ruled that goods from illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank must be subject to EU import duties.
The court said the EU deal with Israel 'applies to the territory of the State of Israel' and the Palestinian one to 'the territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.'
'Each of those two association agreements has its own territorial scope,' it said, adding Israeli goods made in the West Bank cannot enjoy duty-free access to the vast EU market.
Mehola is in the Jordan Valley, which constitutes 25% of the West Bank. Brighton Tubas Friendship and Solidarity Group has been working with grassroots communities in the Jordan Valley since 2006.
