Belgium bans entry into Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine | Israel-Palestine War News

The move comes as EU foreign ministers are still reeling from a global ban on illegal trade.

The federal government of Belgium has agreed to ban the importation of goods made in Israeli settlements into the occupied Palestinian territories.

It is the latest among a small but rapidly growing group of European countries acting alone on a question that has not yet been answered at EU level.

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The decision came at the last cabinet meeting before the summer break, the Belgian News Agency (Belga) reported on Saturday.

The move fulfills a promise made last year on the expansion of Israel’s bombing campaign Gaza and his death.

Earlier this week, Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prevot urged his EU colleagues at a plenary session in Brussels to scrap the ban altogether, criticizing the European Commission for giving ministers a “bone to chew on” instead of a real proposal for action.

Belgium’s ban comes as a domestic pledge and a signal to EU leadership.

The case for strict control was reinforced this year by a Global Echo Litigation Center researchwhich analyzed more than 30,000 documents covering thousands of Israeli agricultural exports to Europe.

Almost one in six products contained goods grown in settlements in the West Bank or the Golan Heights, accounting for almost one in five of shipments to EU countries.

Investigators found that exporters often hide the origin of the produce, calling it Israel, combining it with real Israeli goods, or sending it under addresses unrelated to where it was grown.

A similar move with others in Europe

The EU is Israel’s biggest trading partner, buying about 30 percent of its exports and accounting for nearly a third of its total trade, worth 43 billion euros ($49bn) last year.

Belgium joins the list of countries that no longer expect to join the EU.

Spain lifted the ban last September, the Netherlands agreed in May and Slovenia did the same earlier this year, although it did. impressively his way to Israel following the election of a coalition government with Israel.

The difference among the 27 member states of the EU has made it difficult for the bloc to act on the matter.

Parliament of Ireland it has passed its cancellation on July 15, a few days before the move to Belgium.

The spate of national bans follows efforts earlier this month by the EU to unify its member states.

The European Commission he is said to have published a paper to the capital of the EU offers three options: banning imports, licensing system, or increasing the price of fixed assets. However, no decision was reached.

Five former European leaders, including former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta and German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, published a joint call for the EU to adopt a global ban.

They argued that the restrictions of countries such as Belgium to carry only small weights, since goods passed through customs in one region can move freely throughout the region.

The ban, they wrote, would not amount to sanctions against Israel but would only bring the EU’s trade policy into line with restrictions that have been applied in the past, including mining and goods produced by forced labor.

A number of EU countries, including Spain, Italy and Germany, have taken steps to ban arms exports to Israel in the Gaza conflict.