Made in Israel?
Food imported from the West Bank and other parts of the Palestinian territories will soon have to bear a label clarifying whether it is produced by Palestinians or by farmers in Israeli settlements (previously, labels only read ‘Israel’ or ‘West Bank’). Under international law, Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories are illegal. Although the UK government claims to be opposed to a boycott of Israeli-grown food from the West Bank, it recognises the problem that these settlements pose to international peace.
Whilst Palestinians have welcomed the move, Israel has stated it is ‘extremely disappointed’. The fear is presumably that UK consumers will now be able to show their disapproval to Israel’s settlement policy by refusing to buy goods from Israeli settlements. An item on Friday night’s BBC News suggested that while some people would be taking this course of action, others fail to see the problem. ‘I don’t think it will make any difference whatsoever,’ said one woman. ‘I’d be more interested if it was Fairtrade or not.’
Assuming that this woman was not an isolated case, this illustrates one of the major problems with the way we approach issues of trade justice. The temptation is to adopt a rubber-stamp approach and assume that a label like ‘Fairtrade’ (‘Organic’, ‘Locally produced’, ‘GM-free’…) is a panacea for all the possible ills involved in the production chain. In this case, faced with the issues of illegal settlements, theft of land, destruction of property, control of water supplies, military oppression, restriction of movement and obstruction of access to facilities such as healthcare, employment and education, the response was to look for a particular logo.
That’s not to say that Fairtrade doesn’t do any good. But the implication that a ‘Fairtrade’ label is the only way to ensure that a product is traded fairly is simplistic and, in the context of West Bank produce, utterly irrelevant. In this case, the ‘gold standard’ of trade justice prompted a consumer looking for a clean conscience to achieve little more than abdicating responsibility in favour of an easy option.
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