Juicy brown and ripening yellow dates dangle down from the branches of each palm tree at Israeli settler farms in the Jordan Valley, in the occupied West Bank. This year, as Israeli growers get ready for a good harvest, they are also preparing for the impact of new Western sanctions against settlements, which are illegal under international law. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing BBC News.
The UK government has announced an import ban on settlement goods and said it planned to take action against companies and individuals who provide services for settlement expansion, as part of what it calls a "comprehensive reset" of policy towards Israel following similar moves by several other European countries. Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden have also confirmed their intention to introduce national restrictions, or support European restrictions, on trade in goods with settlements.
Palestinians strongly back such a move, but Israel's foreign minister called it "hostile" and announced a series of counter measures, including the closure of the British consulate in East Jerusalem. Israeli date farmer Avigdor Arbel, from the settlement of Mesua, calls such boycotts "really disgusting". Arbel sells his produce mostly to Europe but also to the US and now, India. However, he says the sector is ready for any new UK ban on settler goods. "As soon as we have a situation of pressure and boycotts, we always break out and look for other markets," he tells me. "So, I believe that if we get to a situation in which there's no place to sell my fruits in Europe, we'll find other markets."
West Bank settlements have expanded rapidly under the current Israeli government, whose ministers say they want "to bury the idea" of an independent Palestinian state - part of the long-standing international formula for peace in the region known as the two-state solution. At the same time, settler violence against Palestinians has surged to what the UN says is "an all-time high". With new settler outposts - which are also illegal under Israeli law - now dotting the barren hilltops of the Jordan Valley, there have been repeated attacks on local Palestinians, particularly Bedouin and herding communities. In January, the last of some 600 villagers fled their homes in Ras Ein al-Ouja after intense harassment by hardline settlers, often backed by Israeli security forces. It was the largest single displacement of a Palestinian community in the past three years. Further north, in March, Israeli settlers brutally beat and sexually assaulted a Palestinian shepherd during a night raid on Khirbet Humsa.
British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told Parliament on Tuesday that a set of facts on the ground had been created "to make the two-state solution unviable," while "settler terrorism is rampant". Quoting a former Israeli minister of health and retired brigadier general, Ephraim Sneh, he said the UK government "agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank perpetrated by settler terrorists", to which the Israeli government had "turned a blind eye" or actually supported. In a significant change of UK policy, he said the government now agreed with the 2024 International Court of Justice advisory opinion that Israel's continued occupation "is unlawful". As a consequence, Miliband said this should be reflected "in the economic relationships we choose to have with the occupied territories". "I do not believe that the British people want us supporting the occupation by accepting products from settlements in our shops and supermarkets."
The Jordan Valley is a fertile strip of land that comprises nearly 30% of the West Bank. Medjool dates are the main export crop from both Israeli settler farms and Palestinian farms in the Jordan Valley. "These are rubbish," says Palestinian farmer Abdul Halim Abu Omar, dramatically reaching up and throwing away a handful of shrivelled, yellow dates from a tree in the grove where he works in al-Ouja, north of Jericho. Around half of the date palms here have no fruit at all. "It's because we lack water," Abu Omar says. His is an extreme case: this year, the trees he cares for have received less than a third of the water they need to thrive. Access to water has long been a pressing issue in the West Bank. Interim peace agreements from the 1990s have left a water disparity between Israelis and Palestinians, and Israeli authorities typically prioritise water for settlers over Palestinians' needs. Recently, in rural areas of the Jordan Valley, almost all of which is under Israeli security and civilian control, extremist settlers have also taken over several freshwater springs. The Israeli Civil Administration told the BBC that it keeps "continuous contact" with the Palestinian Water Authority and assists in carrying out repairs to water infrastructure.
This harvest time, Abu Omar has few dates that are fit to show local Palestinian exporter Momen Sinokrot. His firm, Palestine Gardens, works with 55 date growers in the Jordan Valley to sell to several European countries, including the UK. Sinokrot believes that if more states ban settlement trade this could curb settlement growth.