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Itongadol.- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas Monday for urging African countries to boycott goods produced by Israeli-owned companies in the West Bank, stressing that vilification of Jews had led to full-fledged persecution against them in the past.
“Abbas yesterday called for the labeling and boycott of Israeli products. This is definitely not a language of peace,” Netanyahu said during a meeting with Polish ambassador to Israel Jacek Chodorowicz, according to Army Radio.
“What was done to the Jews [in the past] is what is being done to the Jews now,” Netanyahu said, in an apparent reference to events in pre-World War II Nazi Germany leading up to the Holocaust. “We will not let this happen.”
Speaking at the 25th African Union assembly in the South African city of Johannesburg on Sunday, Abbas called on state leaders to require the labeling of settlement products as a means of deterring consumers from purchasing such items. The Palestinian leader added that the sale of Israeli goods produced beyond the Green Line violated international legal standards.
“We must boycott the settlements which were established on Arab land, contrary to international law and resolutions,” Abbas said, according to the official Palestinian Wafa news agency.
The European Union is expected to soon begin rolling out rules that require the labeling of goods from the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, diplomats said recently. Experts have warned that the program, which Jerusalem has railed against, could snowball into a larger boycott of Israel.
The Boycott Divestment Sanctions movement calls for blanket boycotts of Israel, not just Israeli settlements, with the stated goal of ending the Israeli occupation of Arab lands and granting a right of return to all Palestinian refugees.