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Israel to EU: Labeling Settlement Products Is Boycotting Israel
(Jerusalem Post) Tovah Lazaroff - Placing consumer labels on products from West Bank settlements is the equivalent of boycotting Israel, Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely said on Tuesday before she embarked on a trip to European capitals to wage a diplomatic war against the selective singling out of such exports. Senior Israeli diplomatic officials have warned of the imminent publication of EU guidelines that would allow EU member states to label such products. "We do not see any difference between the industrial area of Barkan and the industrial area of Haifa," she said during a visit to Barkan in the Samaria region of the West Bank. "I came today to show the world what it really looks like, co-existence." Industrial parks in the West Bank that export to Europe employ both Israelis and Palestinians who work together in the businesses. Hotovely said she visited a factory in Barkan where 60% of the employees were Palestinians, many of them in management positions. "When you do labeling you harm 10,000 Palestinian families and you do not do anything to the very strong economic system in Israel," she said. Opposition leader Isaac Herzog (Zionist Union) told UK Ambassador to Israel David Quarrey on Tuesday that the European move "is a process that ensures only one thing, the perpetuation of hatred and conflict in the region. Product labeling is a violent act of extremists that only want to make the situation worse, and the European Union has fallen into their trap."