A member of the central council of the Fatah party, headed by Abbas, calls on the Palestinian Authority to extend its boycott of Yesha (Judea and Samaria) products to all of Israel.
Speaking at a recent conference in El Bireh, next to Ramallah, Mahmoud al Aylool said an all-out boycott of all Israeli products is “legitimate resistance” and is effective because the PA market is Israel”s second largest outside of the United States. “The struggle is not political but rather is cultural and is connected to our daily lives,” he declared. Jordanian trade unions also are calling for a total boycott of Israel.
Aylool called on students to oversee activities in their homes and schools to keep out Israeli products. The conference was organized to raise awareness in the PA community of the boycott of Jewish products from Judea and Samaria, but Aylool extended its mandate.
Previous agreements between the PA and Israel ensure open markets, and implicitly prohibit boycotts. PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has led the movement to place an embargo on goods and merchandise from Judea and Samaria. Several weeks ago, he attended a public burning of thousands of dollars of Jewish products that were confiscated, and PA forces have arrested several Arabs for purchasing Jewish goods.
The PA is not likely to call officially for an full boycott of all Israeli products because it would not be accepted by the American government, but can cause de facto acceptance of it. It is an impractical idea in the long term, because as pro-Israel activists have noted,if the international campaign to boycott Israel were put into full effect, it would include giving up life-saving medicines as well as cellphones, computers and telecommunications equipment, often originating in Israeli factories.
The de facto Hamas authority, which receives daily shipments of humanitarian assistance via Israel, has not called for a boycott on Jewish products from Judea and Samaria or from the rest of Israel.
However, Akiva Eldar, a columnist for the left-wing Haaretz newspaper, not only backed the PA boycott on Judea and Samaria but also called on the Israeli government to “follow in the PA’s footsteps and cut itself off from the settlers…. Instead of hiding behind the self-righteous claim that it is providing livelihoods for thousands of indigent laborers, let the government open the Israeli markets to more Arab goods and workers from the territories.”
Haaretz and the Ynet web sites also were noted in a recent report by the CAMERA media watchdog organization for publishing misleading and often incorrect anti-Israel information.
