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Bahrain Importing Settlement Products Infuriates Palestinians

Last month, Bahrain's foreign minister held Jerusalem talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and visiting US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Menahem KAHANA POOL/AFP/File
Last month, Bahrain's foreign minister held Jerusalem talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and visiting US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Menahem KAHANA POOL/AFP/File
    London, Tel Aviv- Asharq Al-Awsat
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Bahrain Importing Settlement Products Infuriates Palestinians

Last month, Bahrain's foreign minister held Jerusalem talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and visiting US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Menahem KAHANA POOL/AFP/File
Last month, Bahrain's foreign minister held Jerusalem talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and visiting US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Menahem KAHANA POOL/AFP/File

Bahraini Minister of Industry, Commerce, and Tourism Zayed bin Rashid Al Zayani announced Thursday that his country’s imports from Israel will not be subject to distinctions between products made within Israel and those from settlements in occupied territory, drawing a rebuke from the Palestinians.

Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates established official relations with Israel on September 15th, in agreements brokered by the United States.

The two Gulf States said at the time that those agreements became possible after Israel agreed to freeze the plan to annex West Bank settlements.

Most countries in the world consider the settlements illegal.

The Bahraini Minister expressed his country's openness to importing settlement products.

Zayani said Bahrain would treat Israeli products as Israeli products, regardless of their source. “We will treat Israeli products as Israeli products. So we have no issue with labeling or origin,” he told Reuters during a visit to Israel.

Under European Union guidelines, settlement products should be clearly labeled as such when exported to EU member countries. The Trump administration last month removed US customs distinctions between goods made within Israel and in settlements.

Zayani’s remarks were condemned by Wasel Abu Youssef of the Palestine Liberation Organization as “contradicting international and UN resolutions”.

Abu Youssef urged Arab countries not to import products even from inside Israel, in order to prevent it “stretching into Arab markets to strengthen its economy”.

Palestinians now fear that the rapprochement of relations between Gulf countries and Israel will seriously harm their aspirations for the establishment of their independent state.

It is not clear until now the position of the rest of the Gulf countries on importing settlements.

But an Israeli winery that uses grapes grown on the occupied Golan Heights said in September that its labels would be sold in the UAE.

Israel expects trade with Bahrain worth around $220 million in 2021, not including possible defense and tourism deals.

Zayani said Bahraini carrier Gulf Air was tentatively scheduled to begin flights to Tel Aviv on Jan. 7, with shipping to follow.

“We are fascinated by how integrated IT and innovation sector in Israel has been embedded in every facet of life,” he said.

He played down speculation in Israel that its citizens visiting Bahrain could be at risk of reprisals for the assassination last Friday of a top Iranian nuclear scientist, which Tehran blamed on Israeli agents.

“We don’t see any threats, and therefore we don’t see any requirement for additional security or special treatment for Israelis,” he said.

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Arab World

Israel Threatens to Expand War If Hezbollah Truce Collapses

People stand near damaged buildings in Khirbet Silem, after the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, southern Lebanon December 3, 2024. (Reuters)
People stand near damaged buildings in Khirbet Silem, after the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, southern Lebanon December 3, 2024. (Reuters)
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Israel Threatens to Expand War If Hezbollah Truce Collapses

People stand near damaged buildings in Khirbet Silem, after the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, southern Lebanon December 3, 2024. (Reuters)
People stand near damaged buildings in Khirbet Silem, after the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, southern Lebanon December 3, 2024. (Reuters)

Israel threatened on Tuesday to return to war in Lebanon if its truce with Hezbollah collapses, and said this time its attacks would go deeper and target the Lebanese state itself, after the deadliest day since the ceasefire was agreed last week.

In its strongest threat since the truce was agreed to end 14 months of war with Hezbollah, Israel said it would hold Lebanon responsible for failing to disarm fighters who violate the ceasefire.

"If we return to war we will act strongly, we will go deeper, and the most important thing they need to know: that there will be no longer be an exemption for the state of Lebanon," Defense Minister Israel Katz said.

"If until now we separated the state of Lebanon from Hezbollah... it will no longer be [like this]," he said during a visit to the northern border area.

Despite last week's truce, Israeli forces have continued strikes against what they say are Hezbollah fighters ignoring the agreement to halt attacks and withdraw beyond the Litani River, about 30 km (18 miles) from the frontier.

On Monday, Hezbollah shelled an Israeli military post, while Lebanese authorities said at least 12 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon. Another person was killed on Tuesday by a drone strike, Lebanon said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said any infraction of the truce would be punished, however small.

"We are enforcing this ceasefire with an iron fist," he said ahead of a cabinet meeting in the northern border city of Nahariya. "We are currently in a ceasefire, I note, a ceasefire, not the end of the war," he added.

DIPLOMACY

Top Lebanese officials urged Washington and Paris to press Israel to uphold the ceasefire, after dozens of military operations on Lebanese soil that Beirut has deemed violations, two senior Lebanese political sources told Reuters on Tuesday.

The sources said caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri, a close Hezbollah ally who negotiated the deal on behalf of Lebanon, spoke to officials at the White House and French presidency late on Monday.

Mikati, quoted by the Lebanese news agency, said that diplomatic communications had intensified since Monday to stop Israeli violations of the ceasefire. He also said a recruitment drive was under way by the Lebanese army to strengthen its presence in the south.

US State Department spokesperson Matt Miller told reporters on Monday that the ceasefire "is holding" and that the US had "anticipated that there might be violations".

The truce came into effect on Nov. 27 and prohibits Israel from conducting offensive military operations in Lebanon, while requiring Lebanon to prevent armed groups including Hezbollah from launching attacks on Israel. It gives Israeli troops 60 days to withdraw from south Lebanon.

A mission chaired by the United States is tasked with monitoring, verifying and helping enforce the truce, but it has yet to begin work.

Lebanon's Mikati met in Beirut on Monday with US General Jasper Jeffers, who will chair the monitoring committee.

Two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters that France's representative to the committee, General Guillaume Ponchin, would arrive in Beirut on Wednesday and that the committee would hold its first meeting on Thursday.

"There is an urgency to finalize the mechanism, otherwise it will be too late," one of the sources said, referring to Israel's gradual intensification of strikes despite the truce.