Manufacturers boss urges EU against trade boycott

TEL AVIV — The Manufacturers’ Association of Israel (MAI) head has urged his European counterparts not to boycott Israeli businesses, warning that such a move could hit Palestinians as well, in a letter seen Monday.

The open letter to European industry leaders comes a week before Israel is due to end exports of poultry and dairy produce from its West Bank settlements to the European Union (EU).

It also comes at a time of growing calls by activists for a general boycott of Israel over its alleged human rights violations in the Palestinian territories.

“I am asking for your support and assistance to convince the business community in your country not to use economic means to penalise their fellow Israeli manufacturers and exporters,” Zvi Oren wrote in the letter obtained by AFP Monday.

“Such actions can only affect our region in a negative way by loss of jobs and growth on both sides [Israeli and Palestinian],” the letter said.

Israeli and European officials on August 17 said the country would from September 1 halt illegal exports to the EU of poultry and dairy produce from its settlements in occupied Palestinian territory.

The EU in 2013 issued guidelines banning European institutions from dealing with Israeli entities operating in settlements.

And there have been growing calls for an economic, academic and cultural boycott of Israel over alleged human rights violations, including in Gaza, where a 49-day conflict has killed more than 2,100 Palestinians, most of them civilians.

Some 22,500 Palestinians are employed in West Bank settlements, 6,000 of whom work in Israeli-owned businesses, according to the MAI.

The chief of the MAI’s international section, Dan Catarivas, told AFP it was “clear that if businesses [in the occupied territories] were affected by the boycott, so would be their Palestinian employees”.

Catarivas said the wider boycott campaign would have an “insignificant” effect on Israel’s economy, given that settlements accounted for at most $300 million of its $45 billion of annual exports.

Some European funds have already been withdrawn from Israeli financial institutions with branches in the West Bank.