Monday, August 19, 2019

A Matter of Origin

The EU guidelines on wine seem to inist on a "region" as the geographical identification unit as to where a product is made where as where the grapes are grown is another matter: 

"For most products, at least one of the stages of distillation or preparation takes place in the region. However, raw products do not need to come from the region". 

You might then ask why then does the EU insist on "Palestine" when "Judea & Samaria", regions, would do?

Well, it doesn't actually.

But in the first instance, those guidelines above refer solely to EU countries.  

In other words, what is good for the EU is not good for other countries.

The official EU position as regards Israel, however, as clarified for me from an official spokesperson, is this


The indication of origin of products from territories occupied by Israel is a technical consumer protection issue, based on the EU recognising Israel within its 1967 border. Goods of origin from these territories, as  other goods for import into the EU, need to be correctly labelled so that consumers in the EU have full clarity where the products come from.  

The EU does not support any elements of the so-called ‘BDS’ approach (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) against Israel, and hence also not the boycott of products from Israeli settlements.  

An Interpretative Notice of the European Commission was issued in November 2015 and it provides some clarity on the existing EU rules. The main purpose is to be helpful to a consumer in that an improper labeling would "mislead the consumer as to the true origin of the product".  It demands that the mandatory indication of origin be "correct and not misleading".  As they note

"Made in Israel" used for the products coming from Israeli settlements would mislead the consumer and therefore is inconsistent with existing EU legislation.

And further,


'product from Israel' should not be used for products from the Golan Heights or the West Bank (including East Jerusalem). For products from West Bank or the Golan Heights that originate from settlements, an indication limited to 'product from Golan Heights' or 'product from West Bank' would not be acceptable. In such cases the expression 'Israeli settlement' or equivalent needs to be added

Before we deal with why that instruction is in place, one more element need be emphasized. The EU asserts that the geographical area of origin must be "internationally recognised" and for the EU, Israel was and continues to be internationally recognized as defined by its "pre-1967 borders' so


In line with UNSC resolution 2334 of 2016, the EU considers Israeli settlements in occupied territories as illegal under international law.

Let's deconstruct this.

In the first instance, we need be clear there were no "borders" prior to 1967. They were, as defined in an internationally recognized Armistice Agreement and those lines were specifically categorized in Article II that being demarcated,


no military or political advantage should be gained

Furthermore there,


no provision of this Agreement shall in any way prejudice the rights, claims and positions of either Party hereto in the ultimate peaceful settlement of the Palestine question

In other words, Israel and Jordan could both put forward territorial claims beyond those lines. Indeed,


The basic purpose of the Armistice Demarcation Lines is to delineate the lines beyond which the armed forces of the respective Parties shall not move

Nothing political but rather a simple marking at which point the military forces had stopped operations.

Moreover, those lines were temporary in the extreme, with no permanancy as per

Article XII 3 which reads


The Parties to this Agreement may, by mutual consent, revise this Agreement or any of its provisions, or may suspend its application, other than articles I and III, at any time.
Jordan, invading Israel in June 1967, effectively put an end to the legitimacy of those lines.

To sanctify, as it were, the "pre-1967 borders" is an act of nonsense.

Now, between you and me, everyone knows Israel has extended its administrative rule to those regions of the Land of Israel that were under British Mandate rule until 1948, a rule quite legal and internationally recognized. That is the meaning of "belligerent occupation", that it si the rrsult of military engagement. Israel, in an act of self-defense, thwarted the intentions of the invaders and assumed administrationn over Judea and Samaria, as well as Gaza.

Those regions were geographically part of the area of 'historic Palestine' the League of nations awarded to the Jewish people to, among other purposes:


encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency. referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews, on the land, including State lands and waste lands
From 1922 until 1967, no recognized country or state legally ruled those areas except the Mandate. In Hebrew, the Mandate was translated as "Land of Israel". Jordan was an illegal occupier. 

All this leaves us with a simple solution for the requirement of the EU to note the origin of the product: the Land of Israel.

^

6 comments:

Mr. Cohen said...

“In other cases the more or less universally used description of eligibility [for refugee status] included people who were forced to leave permanent or habitual homes.

In the case of the Arab refugees, however, the definition had been broadened to include as refugees any persons who had been in Palestine for only two years before Israel’s statehood in 1948.”

SOURCE: From Time Immemorial:
The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict
over Palestine
(chapter 1, page 4)
by Joan Peters, 1984, JKAP Publications

===================================
“…what the Arabs envisioned was something that
could achieve Israel shrinking to indefensible size…”

SOURCE: From Time Immemorial:
The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict
over Palestine
(chapter 2, page 14)
by Joan Peters, 1984, JKAP Publications

PERSONAL COMMENT:
Remember this when you hear
about the “Two-State Solution”.
“Two-State Solution” = “Final Solution”

===================================
[Mohamed] Heikal [editor of the influential
Al Ahram Egyptian newspaper, in
year 1971] called for a change of Arab rhetoric:

No more threats of throwing Israel into the sea; and a new political strategy aimed at reducing Israel to indefensible borders and pushing her into diplomatic and economic isolation.

He predicted that “total withdrawal” would “pass sentence on the entire state of Israel.”

SOURCE: From Time Immemorial:
The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict
over Palestine
(chapter 2, page 14)
by Joan Peters, 1984, JKAP Publications

PERSONAL COMMENT:
Remember this when you hear
about the “Two-State Solution”.
“Two-State Solution” = “Final Solution”

===================================
Khaled Al Azm, who was the Prime Minister of Syria
after the [year] 1948 war, deplored the Arab tactics
and subsequent exploitation of the [Palestinian]
refugees, in his [year] 1972 memoirs:


“Since 1948 it was we who demanded the return of the refugees...
while it was we [Arabs] who made them [Palestinians] leave [Israel]...
We brought disaster upon...

Arab refugees, by inviting them and bringing pressure to bear upon them to leave... Then we exploited them in executing crimes of murder, arson, and throwing bombs upon...men, women and children, all this in the service of political purposes...”

SOURCE: From Time Immemorial:
The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict
over Palestine
(chapter 2, page 16)
by Joan Peters, 1984, JKAP Publications

===================================
UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency]
altered its definition of refugees to include those
people who had lived in Palestine a minimum of
only two years preceding the 1948 conflict
[in which Israel became an independent state].

SOURCE: From Time Immemorial:
The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict
over Palestine
(chapter 2, page 18)
by Joan Peters, 1984, JKAP Publications

Mr. Cohen said...

In 1958, former director of UNRWA Ralph Galloway
declared angrily while in Jordan:


“The Arab states do NOT want to solve
the [Palestinian] refugee problem.

They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront
to the United Nations, and as a weapon against Israel.

Arab leaders do not give a damn whether Arab refugees live or die.”

SOURCE: From Time Immemorial:
The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict
over Palestine
(chapter 2, page 23)
by Joan Peters, year 1984, JKAP Publications

===================================
“Notwithstanding the facts, the Arab world
has assiduously worked to build the myth
that no jobs were available in Arab lands
for Arab refugees in [year] 1948 or since…”

SOURCE: From Time Immemorial:
The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict
over Palestine
(chapter 2, page 22)
by Joan Peters, 1984, JKAP Publications

===================================
“One crucial truth, among the many which have been obscured or deprecated, is that there have been as many Jewish refugees who fled or were expelled from the Arab countries [in year 1948] as there were Arab refugees from Israel, and that the Jews left of necessity and in flight from danger.”

SOURCE: From Time Immemorial:
The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict
over Palestine
(chapter 2, page 25)
by Joan Peters, year 1984, JKAP Publications

===================================
Hitler’s crimes against the Jews have been frequently justified in Arab writings and pronouncements. In the 1950s, Minister Anwar Sadat published an open letter to Hitler, hoping he was still alive and sympathizing with his cause.

Important Arab writers and political figures have said Hitler was “wronged and slandered…” Or that Hitler wanted to “save … the world from this malignant evil…”

SOURCE: From Time Immemorial:
The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict
over Palestine
(chapter 3, page 37)
by Joan Peters, 1984, JKAP Publications

Anonymous said...

In addition to what you write, in its peace treaty with Israel, Jordan formally renounced any rights to the lands of the former Mandate that it had seized in 1948-49 and lost in 1967.The border between the two countries was based on the Mandate demarcation. Only the UK and Pakistan ever recognized Jordan's sovereignty to the Mandate lands it conquered illegally (though the UK balked at its claim to "East" Jerusalem). On what basis, then can the EU justify referring to these lands by the names given them by an illegal belligerent occupier rather than restore their original - even if Jewish and biblical - names? Doesn’t that grant legitimacy to an illegal act?
It would be interesting to compare how the EU labels items from Northern Cyprus. I couldn’t find anything easily at hand. Something tells me it is not "occupied Northern Cyprus" but I could be wrong.

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