Whatever the moral justification of this step, it is unlikely to amount to more than an exercise in gesture politics. Israel’s Economics Ministry reckons that it could cause no more than $50m-worth of damage to Israeli producers a year, out of some $300m exported from the settlements (and some $18.9 billion that Israel exports to Europe). It will not help to restart the moribund peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, and may only entrench an Israeli government that believes that it is unfairly singled out by a hostile and, in its view, anti-Semitic international community.
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