Europe, Slap a Label on Settlement Goods

The European Union is inching towards issuing EU-wide guidelines on the labeling of produce from Israeli settlements in the West Bank; agreement could be reached as early as later this month at the regular meeting of EU foreign ministers. If there is delay, most likely to accommodate current American efforts at resuming peace negotiations, it is likely to be short-lived. The U.S., predictably, will discourage labeling. But even President Obama fully expects Europe to move in the direction of taking these steps: whereas America might indulge every Israeli action, in the absence of progress towards two states, the rest of the world will not. This was part of Obama’s Jerusalem pitch as to why, for Israel, peace is necessary as well as being both just and possible.