Following a visit to the area by US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, in December 2020, the US Customs and Border Protection Agency issued a directive that “producers within certain areas designated in the Oslo Accords and the Hebron Protocol must make their goods as ‘Israel,’ ‘Product of Israel’ or ‘Made in Israel’ when exported to the United States.”
What they were doing was clarifying what had already been set out in the 1993 and 1995 Oslo Accords signed between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and witnessed by the United States, the United Nations, the European Union, Russia and Japan.
These Accords divided up the ‘West Bank’ into three sections. Area A was put under the security and civil administration of the PA. Area B was put under the civil administration of the PA and security was to be administered by joint PA and Israeli forces. But Area C was recognized as being under both the security and civilian administration of Israel for all its residents.
The new US regulation included for customs purposes that goods from Areas A and B are to be designated as produced in the West Bank, Gaza goods are designated as products of Gaza.
It was significant that the US Customs ruling was turned into policy on December 23. This was the 4th anniversary of the despicable United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 in which the United States, under President Obama and Vice President Biden, for the first time in history, refused to veto an anti-Israel resolution that attempted to mark out the parameters of a Palestinian state that included vast territories that would endanger Israel’s existence.
It was done deliberately and vindictively as payback for Israel’s refusal to accept the terrible Obama Administration’s Iran nuclear deal.
UNSC 2334 was Obama’s slap in Israel’s face as he exited the White House in 2016.
Villagers can also gaze at the high-rise buildings of Tel Aviv, Israeli’s major commercial center and home to four million Israelis.
This, without talking about the heart of Jerusalem, including the Old City, the Western Wall of the Jewish Temple, the Temple Mount, the City of David, the Mount of Olives, the Rockefeller Museum and the Hebrew University, to name just a few of the essential properties of the Jewish State that, thanks to the vindictive final act of the Obama Administration, bequeathed these treasure into the malevolent and cynical hands of United Nations officials and, potentially, an anti-Semitic, hate-filled, Palestinian leadership.
The Israel Institute for Strategic Studies intends to produce further educational material and videos that will show, in stark terms, the utter vulnerability of what Israel would look like under the threat of a 1967 Palestine.
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Barry Shaw, International Public Diplomacy Director, Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.
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