Belgium advises to label products from settlements; Latin America urges peace

Belgium advised retailers on Tuesday to clearly label the origin of products made in Israeli settlements that are in occupied territories where Palestinians seek statehood. The non-binding recommendation has nothing to do with escalating conflict between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, the Belgian Economics Ministry said, noting that Britain and Denmark already had similar labelling in place. “It’s a non-binding advice to state on labels that products originating from occupied territories come from there,” a ministry spokeswoman said. “We don’t see this as a sanction against Israel, but EU rules stipulate that consumers have to be informed of the origins of products.”

A demonstration in solidarity with the Palestinian people, last week, in Buenos Aires (Photo: CTA)

A demonstration in solidarity with the Palestinian people, last week, in Buenos Aires (Photo: CTA)

The labels Belgium has in mind would mainly apply to fruit and vegetables grown in Jewish settlements in the Jordan Valley of the West Bank. But they could include products such as sparkling water made by SodaStream and cosmetics by Ahava which both have production facilities in the West Bank.

Peru and Chile decide also yesterday to recall Israel ambassadors in protest of Israel’s operation in Gaza. The South American countries follow similar decisions by Brazil and Ecuador last week. Days after former Cuban leader Fidel Castro criticized the State of Israel’s recent operations in the Gaza Strip, several other figures across the region have also criticized the Israeli Government for their actions and called for peace in the Middle East.

Castro’s nation of Cuba said through their Foreign Ministry that the island “rejects and condemns Israel for using its military and technological superiority to execute a policy of collective punishment with a disproportionate use of force, which has caused civilian casualties and enormous material damage.” El Salvador backed Cuba’s stance and added that the “UN’s self-defense clause used by Israel does not justify the disproportionate use of military force against another nation, much less against that nation’s civilian population.” Castro’s words were quickly followed by those of Rigoberta Menchú and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, winners of the Nobel Peace Prize from Guatemala and Argentina, respectively.

Pérez Esquivel, winner of the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize for defending human rights during the military dictatorship in his native Argentina (1976-1983), lamented the Israeli actions as “Israel has, once again, unleashed the full force of its powerful military against the captive Palestinian population through inhumane and illegal acts of armed aggression.” “The capacity of Israel to stage these types of devastating attacks with impunity stems from its international economic and military cooperation with complicit governments worldwide,” he wrote on his webpage. “During the 2008-2019 period, the US has provided, and will continue to provide, military aid to Israel worth $30 billion. European nations sell and buy billions of dollars of arms from Jerusalem and sign military research grants with Israeli companies and universities, and Israel exports billions of dollars of weaponry to many other nations worldwide,” Pérez Esquivel said. “There is a reason why Israel sells these arms as ‘field-tested.’” “This type of arms development globally sends a clear message of the approval of Israeli military aggression, including its war crimes and possible crimes against humanity,” he said while posing alongside Guatemalan indigenous leader Rigoberta Menchú, UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador and recipient of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize. The two called upon “the United Nations and all the governments of the world to take immediate measures and apply a comprehensive and legally binding military embargo on the State of Israel, similar to one imposed upon South Africa during the apartheid” so that Israel’s “system of occupation, colonization and systematic denial of rights to the Palestinians” can stop.

The Government of Colombia released a statement that presented its objection to the Israeli military offensive in Gaza and urged Jerusalem to show “maximum restraint.” “The Government of Colombia laments the loss of more than 600 Palestinians, many of whom are children, women and the elderly, and expresses its solidarity with the families of the victims,” said the statement released by the Colombian Foreign Ministry. The statement also rejects any attacks made by Hamas against the Israeli territory and its civilians, and extends the Colombian Government’s condolences to the families of any Israeli victims of the conflict. The measured tone of the Colombian statement reflects its close political links with the US, and other regional US allies like Honduras, Peru and Costa Rica released similar statements. “The Government of Colombia is calling for an immediate cease to hostilities and demands that, in accordance with international humanitarian law, the establishment of humanitarian spaces so that victims can be attended to and receive the medical help they need.”

Several other Latin American nations made calls for peace at the United Nations Human Rights Council’s emergency session where a majority voted in favor of sending an investigate team to Gaza in order to investigate alleged violations of humanitarian and human rights laws committed by Israeli forces in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The sole ‘no’ vote came from the United States. “The disregard for international humanitarian law and for the right to life was shockingly evident for all to see in the apparent targeting of seven children playing on a Gaza beach on July 16,” Navi Pillay, the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, said as she led the session. “Credible reports gathered by my office in Gaza indicate that the children were hit first by an Israeli airstrike, and then by naval shelling. All seven were hit. Four of them, between the ages of 9 and 11, from the same Bakr family, were killed. These children were clearly civilians taking no part in hostilities,” she lamented. As the Council condemned the “widespread, systematic and gross violation of international human rights and fundamental freedoms” in Gaza, Mexico’s ambassador to the UN, Jorge Lomónaco, condemned the violence. “We do not condone the launching of rockets from Gaza that target the civilian Israeli population, and we certainly do not condome the disproportionate use of military force by the Israelis in the Gaza Strip, which has principally affected the Palestinian civil population and caused hundreds of deaths,” Lomónaco said. “There needs to be a clear line between military objectives and targets and those which are not, and unfortunately, we have seen the targeting of schools, hospitals and other civilian locations throughout Gaza.

The protection of the civil population and the goods and services necessary for survival should never be subordinated to military objectives,” he argued. María Cristina Perceval, Argentina’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, hoped that “peace and security can take place again after this time of great upheaval” in the region. Furthermore, she condemned Israel’s “indiscriminate abuse of militarism,” for which the “civilians of Gaza are paying the price as a result of the disproportionate use of force.” Although she said that Israel has “escalated the crisis by launching a ground offensive,” Perceval also said that Argentina does not condone the indiscriminate firing of missiles from Gaza into Israel and added that her nation is in full support of any “peace initiatives.”

The Foreign Minister of Ecuador, Ricardo Patiño, was also present at the UN’s session and used stronger words than those of Mexico and Colombia by denouncing the “aggression and attacks launched against the defenseless civilians of the Gaza Strip.” “We are not talking about a war between similar or parallel forces, we are talking about a true massacre of a population. It is essential that the United Nations is allowed to fulfill the role they must meet in this conflict and intervene to stop the killing, especially given the history of Gaza and the events that have preceded the violence currently occurring,” Patiño said. Bolivia’s Evo Morales released a statement informing that he petitioned to Pillay, the UNHCR head, to mull filing a case against Israel for “crimes against humanity” and even “genocide.” His statements come as no surprise; Bolivia has not had diplomatic relations with Israel since the latter launched their last attack on Gaza in 2009.

The Government of Brazil condemned Hamas’ launching of missiles but strongly rejected Israel’s “disproportionate force against unarmed Palestinian civilians.” Chile, meanwhile, echoed Brazil’s statements and there is speculation in Santiago that the nation may suspend its trade talks with Israel and temporarily withdraw its ambassador in Tel Aviv. “Disproportionate response” was seen yet again in the statement released by Uruguay which, like the others, showed that Montevideo was fully against violence on both sides but placed more blame on Israel and its actions. The strongest condemnation of Israeli actions, however, came from Venezuela. Jorge Valero, the nation’s ambassador to the UN, said that Israel “intends to exterminate the Palestinian people” from the Gaza Strip and “strip the Palestinians definitively of their historical place in the world” by maintaining this “continuous onslaught.” The “grave violations of human rights, war crimes and crimes against humanity” committed by Israel’s leadership against civilians in Gaza constitute a “genocidal action,” Valero said, “and through these actions, Israel wants to maintain denying the Palestinian people their legitimate right to establish a sovereign and independent Palestinian state.”

Venezuela went one stop further as Juan Antonio Hernández, Venezuela’s ambassador to Egypt, said that his nation would be providing medicine and other essential supplies to the Gaza Strip to at least lift a small part of the burden placed upon local hospitals, hospitals which have been absolutely flooded by a massive number of patients injured by Israeli bombardment. The military onslaught by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), called Operation Protective Edge, began on July 8. At least 59 Palestinians have been killed and 110 injured in Israeli attacks since midnight Wednesday on the 23rd day of the Gaza offensive, according to the Ministry of Health. In the most devastating attack, at least 15 people were killed when an Israeli artillery shell hit a UN school in the northern Gaza Strip. The shell struck Abu Hussein School in Jabaliya refugee camp, which was sheltering hundreds of newly-displaced Palestinians. In another attack later Wednesday morning, four Palestinian children and three others, all from the Khalili family, were killed in an Israeli shelling on the al-Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City.

 

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Fidel Castro slams Israel’s offensive in Gaza