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Tell Secretary Blinken: Settlement Goods Aren't "Made in Israel"
Dear Secretary Blinken,
We strongly endorse your efforts to reverse the Trump administration’s damaging policies relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
One such Trump-era policy, whose damaging impact we just witnessed, is the (mis)labeling of products made in West Bank settlements as “Made in Israel.”
West Bank settlements are not in Israel. They were constructed in occupied territory, under Israeli military occupation, with the stated objective of preventing the creation of a Palestinian state, to sabotage a future Israeli-Palestinian two-state peace agreement. This is why consecutive US administrations, Democratic and Republican, deemed them an obstacle to peace. The rejection of West Bank settlements is a principled US policy position, which Trump and Pompeo sought to overturn. So is the clear distinction between Israel and the territories it occupied in 1967.
We urge you and the Biden administration to overturn the Trump-era State Department guidance that allows products manufactured in West Bank settlements to be labeled “Made in Israel”. Doing so would rectify a misguided, damaging policy, and would be a significant contribution to advancing a future Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.