ISDS Case Map
Palestine
Monday's announcement for increased relations concerns three areas: diplomatic cooperation; Israel's participation in European plans and agencies; and an examination of possible Israeli integration into the European Single Market.
At issue is whether to deepen relations governed by the current EU-Israel association agreement
Israel is not interested in the supposed “peace dividends” associated with free trade based on the sovereign economic policy of all parties. Israel evidently has other plans, most obvious of which are territorial expansionism and control of the population, both incompatible with Palestinian sovereignty.
Key members of the Israeli and Palestinian private sectors recommended in a joint study that peace negotiators adopt a "Free Trade Agreement Plus" (FTA Plus) as the basis for economic relations between Israel and any future Palestinian state.
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions has called for divestment from Israeli companies: a campaign aimed at the European Union, which accounts for two-thirds of Israel's exports under an EU-Israel Association Agreement. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler, has said that human rights conditions in the agreement should be invoked and Israel's trading preferences suspended. This is unusual, for these were once distant voices.
The impact of the Qualifying Industrial Zones -- a concept proposed by the United States in 1996 to bolster cooperation between Jordan and Israel after the Jordan-Israel peace agreement was signed in 1995 -- remains, after 10 years, difficult to determine. In spite of the tremendous growth of exports to the US market through these zones, QIZs continue to receive mixed reviews and their future is uncertain. Most importantly, the impact of the QIZs on the peace effort has been insignificant, to say the least.
The aim of this paper is to try to understand the Israeli industrialists' strategy in the globalization process in the course of the recent years. The new strategy was implemented in the days of the first Intifada (the Palestinian uprising) in the late 80s. At that time voices were heard in the Association of Israeli Industrialists, the strongest organization of Israeli employers, advocating an agreement with the Palestinians which would not oppose the establishment of an independent Palestinian State, as long as the Palestinian economic dependence on Israel is preserved.
The next time your Wal-Mart sweatpants read “Made in Jordan QIZ” on the label, consider the relationship between economic integration and peace. The truth might not be what you expect.
The UK House of Commons international development committee is calling on the Labour government to press for sanctions against Israel over its treatment of the Palestinian people. As a first step in putting pressure on the Israeli government to end this oppression, the UK should now urge its fellow members in the EU to consider suspending the EU-Israel association agreement, the cross-party committee says.
Members of the European Parliament which recently returned from a fact-finding mission to Israel and Palestine insisted that the EU should review its association agreement with Israel.
