Palestinian FM threatens to expand boycott of Israel
Maliki says time to talk about ‘blacklist’ of settlers
The Palestinian leadership plans to expand its campaign against settlement activity, focusing on boycott of settlement products and settlers, a top Palestinian official said.
“We will come back to the settlements issue... not only regarding the labeling of settlement products, but pertaining to the boycott of settlement products,” Riyad al-Maliki, the Palestinian Authority foreign minister told the Jordanian Al-Dustour newspaper on Thursday.
Maliki’s statement comes approximately two weeks after the UN Security Council passed a resolution critical of settlements, which said they “have no legal validity.”
The Palestinian leadership has long said that it supports boycott of settlement products, but has practically taken few steps to implement a ban on settlement products from the West Bank.
The vast majority of imports into the West Bank come from Israel including settlements.
Maliki added that the Palestinian leadership also intends to boycott individual settlers as well.
“We are also discussing boycotting settlers. We must start talking about a black list, at least with the names of the settlers involved in terrorist activities against the Palestinian people to prevent them from entering certain countries,” Maliki said.
The Palestinian leadership has previously discussed efforts to prevent Israeli politicians and generals, who it believes are accountable for war crimes from traveling abroad, but never before discussed the black list of settlers.
It is unclear how the Palestinian leadership would be able to enforce such a black list.
Moreover, Maliki said that the Palestinian leadership wants to target Israeli companies operating in the settlements.
“We must also discuss the boycott of the companies working in the settlements directly and indirectly,” Maliki stated.
Israel has dedicated substantial resources over the past several years to fighting BDS and Palestinian efforts to isolate Israel internationally.
In June, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that BDS no longer poses a major threat to Israel, saying that Israel has “defeated it.”