[tadamon-l] Fighting FTAs: Economics and Israeli Apartheid: E.U.-Israel Economic Association Agreement

[Tadamon!]

* Fighting FTAs: Economics and Israeli Apartheid.
E.U.-Israel Economic Association Agreement

Interview with John Hilary of War on Want,
conducted by Stefan Christoff for Fighting FTAs.

http://tadamon.resist.ca/index.php/post/1192

An economic association agreement between the European Union and Israel lends 
international political legitimacy to the Israeli government, while providing a 
critical export market for Israeli goods and products, an essential element to 
Israel.s international trade policy.

Growing debate is occurring within Europe concerning the E.U.-Israel agreement 
in the face of Israel.s continuing occupation of Palestinian land and systemic 
abuses of Palestinian human rights as documented by international human rights 
organizations, including Amnesty International. A critical provision within the 
economic agreement stipulates that both the E.U. and Israel respect human 
rights, a provision that has clearly been ignored in the continuation of the 
agreement, despite wide-spread abuses of Palestinian human rights by Israel.

In the U.K. a campaign against the E.U.-Israel agreement is currently taking 
place. John Hilary is a campaigner for the U.K.-based organization War on Want, 
who in this interview address the E.U.-Israel association agreement and 
opposition to its continuation. Also this interview addresses the current push 
towards bilateral trade accords by the E.U., which translates to dozens of 
agreements being negotiated internationally; bilateral 'free-trade' accords 
defined by an economic development model pushed by neo-liberal institutions 
such as the World Bank and IMF.


Stefan Christoff: To start can you outline the E.U.-Israel association 
agreement and the agreement's importance to Israel's economic and political 
stability?

John Hilary: E.U.-Israel association agreement is an agreement that gives 
preferences to Israeli exports, so that Israeli industrial exports into the 
E.U. come in duty free, while Israeli agricultural imports come into Europe 
facing much lower tariffs than they would face going into other countries.

For us this is a particular problem because within the terms of the E.U.-Israel 
association agreement, article II says very clearly that the whole agreement is 
conditional on the respect of human rights by both Israel and the European 
Union. Clearly in the case of Israel, as the U.N. has documented, there is a 
well documented abuse of human rights, and yet the European Union continues to 
reward Israel with this preferential treatment.

Obviously, the European Union is made-up of twenty-seven states now, each of 
which have their own bilateral relations with individual countries and the 
European Union has particular competence as we call it, over certain aspects of 
the external relations of it's members with other states. The trade aspect is a 
particularly strong one, where the European Union has a centralized competence, 
as the individual member-states don.t really have that direct trade 
relationship.

Obviously on the military side, the individual countries will still retain 
their own relationship with countries like Israel and others. For the European 
Union, these association agreements are really at the top of its agenda, as the 
E.U. has a neighborhood policy towards other countries in the Mediterranean, 
including Israel. For the E.U. such trade policy is at the highest levels of 
its current agenda, so it's incredibly important for the E.U. to be engaged in 
this type of association with Israel.

Israel has managed to increase imports into European Union markets by an 
enormous over the last few years, into the U.K. now where two-thirds of all of 
Israel's fruits and vegetables are sold an extremely important market for 
Israel. Also at the high-tech where Israeli exports, in military or other 
high-tech sectors, Israel is gaining preferential access into European markets.

For Israel this situation is absolutely crucial on the economic level but also 
on the symbolic level, as Israel is being welcomed in this setting as a 
respectable member of the international family, being seen as an important 
trade partner without any reference to Israel's ongoing occupation of 
Palestine, or Israel's abuse of Palestinian human rights.

In this light it's important to see the impacts of these economic association 
agreements, between Israel and the E.U., as not just on the economic side but 
on the symbolic side as part of an effort to legitimize the Israeli government.

Stefan Christoff: Can you speak tangibly about some of the efforts that your 
organization has been involved in, to try to publicly critique or oppose the 
E.U.-Israel association agreement?

John Hilary: Definitely; War on Want has been involved at the parliamentary 
level within the Britain for example there is a committee of parliamentarians, 
which is called the international development committee. This parliamentary 
committee has been looking at the impact of policies from outside Palestine on 
the lives of people within Palestine and particularly the incredible poverty 
that we have seen grow in Gaza and the West Bank.

As a result of our testimony, as War on Want, before this international 
development committee in Britain, this committee of parliamentarians called on 
Tony Blair, both then within the role as Prime Minister and now as the 
representative of the Quartet in Palestine, to examine the entire issue of 
preferences granted to Israel through the E.U. Israel economic association 
agreement. It was a good start for us to see a large number of British 
parliamentarians agreeing with us that it.s wrong to be rewarding Israel for 
abuses against the Palestinians, through these trade preferences.

Also we have seen a similar call taken-up at the European parliament where 
European parliamentarians have on more than one occasion voted to suspend the 
E.U. Israel association agreement. Problem is that within the European Union 
you need to get the full agreement of all the different twenty-seven member 
states and there will always be one or two who refuse to come along with this 
line, which is a severe problem for us in relation to campaigning.

Stefan Christoff: Can you explain your perspective on the relationship between 
economic and military ties linking E.U. member states and Israel? As it's 
critical to understand how trade policy is related to foreign policy in the 
context of the 'war on terror'.

John Hilary: Certainly, it's clear in this case that economics and military 
policies are two arms of the same agenda. On the one hand you have the military 
policy that often goes through N.A.T.O., rather than through the E.U., while on 
the other hand you have the economic policies that form the non-military wing 
of the same imperialist agenda.

You can see this in a country like Iraq where clearly a country like the U.K. 
and the U.S. maintain their occupation with other member states of the European 
Union helping out as well. At the same time the E.U. is negotiating an 
agreement with Iraq that is going to lead to open markets and better relations 
between the E.U. and Iraq on the economic level, which for the E.U. is defined 
explicitly by the interests of its business community.

Recently I returned from a three-day conference in Lisbon looking at this exact 
issue, as the European Union is now pushing forward a new generation of 
bilateral trade accords and agreements with developing countries, which are 
explicitly in the interests of European corporations, not in the development 
interests of other counties. This includes access to particular things like 
access to resources, the strategic natural resources within these countries; it 
could be oil, gas or minerals.

Now the European Union is basically saying, we want to recreate the colonial 
relationship in which European business gets access to these resources, rather 
than leaving them to the development needs of the countries in question.

Stefan Christoff: In terms of the new generation of bilateral trade accords 
that the E.U. is currently negotiating, we have focused in this interview 
specifically on the economic association between the E.U. and Israel; however 
within this context can you address the tapestry of negotiations taking place 
across the world, in the Caribbean, Asia, Southern African states.

John Hilary: A tapestry of agreements is a very good way to describing the 
current situation, as basically the European Union has divided-up the world 
map, deciding to have bilateral agreements with as many different trading 
partners from the developing world it can. It's important think of the current 
push towards bilateral agreements within the current context of stalled 
negotiations at the World Trade Organization, where multilateral negotiations 
have failed to make progress.

Today, the European Union has suddenly sifted emphasis towards bilateral 
agreements, putting out a global Europe doctrine, which defines a new strategy 
for bilateral agreements, pushing further than WTO negotiations ever would. 
These negotiations or bilateral agreements are being negotiated more 
aggressively by the E.U., with an explicitly pro-corporate agenda, which will 
deliver for European business irrespective of potentially negative impacts on 
developing countries.

----

Listen to the audio interview on-line at Fighting FTAs, this interview was 
produced and conducted by journalist Stefan Christoff, who is a member of 
Tadamon! Montreal...

* Fighting FTAs: Campaigning against the EU-Israel Association Agreement
http://www.fightingftas.org/spip.php?article261

* Tadamon! Montreal:
http://tadamon.resist.ca

-----------------------
_______________________________________________
oth mailing list
oth at ckut.ca
http://lists.ckut.ca/mailman/listinfo/oth