US government reissues labeling guidance for West Bank products

United States Customs and Border Protection has reissued two-decades-old guidance stipulating that products made in the Occupied West Bank should not be labelled ‘made in Israel’.

According to US State Department spokesperson Mark Toner, speaking at Thursday’s daily press briefing, the reminder, issued January 23, was a response to complaints about mislabelled imports.

Toner emphasised that the guidance “in no way supersedes prior rulings or regulations”, and “nor does it impose additional requirements with respect to merchandise imported from the West Bank, Gaza Strip or Israel.”

The original 1995 notification was actually intended to boost Palestinian exports in the context of the Oslo Accords.

Nonetheless, some have deemed the decision to reissue the relatively obscure guidance as related to moves by human rights groups to label, or restrict the entry of, goods produced in illegal Israeli settlements established in the West Bank.

On Friday, Israel’s Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Uri Ariel described the decision to reissue the guidance, and its timing, as “unreasonable, unfair and inappropriate.”

In the U.S., meanwhile, advocacy group The Israel Project has warned that, while distinct from recently-issued European Union labelling guidelines that explicitly refer to settlements, the US Customs regulations “looks very much like an anti-Israel broadside.”