AMNESTY International UK has warned that a new UK trade deal with Israel could allow Israel to consolidate its settler-colonialism and apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The global organisation said in a press release that it submitted a submission to the UK government consultation spelling out dangers of loosely-drafted deal that would allow Israeli exporters to ‘pass off’ settlement goods as Israeli ones.
Amnesty International has said that a new UK trade deal with Israel ‘must not be a betrayal of Palestinians’ human rights’, as negotiations on the deal are set to begin.
According to the press release, UK International Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan was due to meet the Israeli Ambassador to the UK Tzipi Hotovely in London Wednesday afternoon to begin talks on the issue.
‘The UK has recently conducted a consultation over plans to negotiate a new UK-Israel Free Trade Agreement this year which will “upgrade” an existing Trade and Partnership Deal with Israel,’ the statement read.
Amnesty warned that ‘a poorly-drafted deal could allow the Israeli authorities to consolidate unfounded claims to occupied Palestinian land, expand illegal settlements, and perpetuate the system of apartheid associated with this.’
‘A new trade deal with Israel must not be a betrayal of Palestinians’ human rights and must uphold the UK’s obligations under international law,’ Peter Frankental, Amnesty International UK’s Economic Affairs Director, said.
‘In their haste to agree a shiny new trade deal with Israel, there’s a distinct danger that UK negotiators will fail to ensure absolute clarity over the precise origins of goods destined for the UK market.
‘Unfortunately, the faulty EU-Israel trade arrangement is currently allowing Israeli exporters to pass off settlement goods as Israeli ones – a UK Free Trade Agreement needs to be distinctly better than this,’ he added.
‘The bottom line here is that UK-Israel trade should not incentivise Israel’s system of apartheid against the Palestinians,’ he went on to say.
Amnesty noted that it has sent a 19-page briefing to the Department of Trade setting out how the agreement should be framed to ensure it doesn’t reinforce Israel’s breaches of international law and is consistent with the UK’s current non-recognition of Israeli colonial settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Such differentiation within a trade agreement, requires robust monitoring and enforcement of WTO rules of origin concerning the sourcing of goods, warned Amnesty.
‘However, Amnesty is concerned that a lack of clarity in the terms of a new trade deal could nevertheless see the UK treating goods and services sourced from Israeli settlements built on stolen Palestinian land as legitimate items of trade, thus tacitly supporting Israel’s wider occupation, settlement and annexation project.’
The organisation called on the UK to ensure that there is a clear, explicit and unambiguous statement emphasising the UK’s non-recognition of the Occupied Palestinian Territories as being part of the State of Israel; and a definition of territorial scope that explicitly and unequivocally excludes products and services from Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories from the scope of the agreement.