Foodstuffs originating in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel imported into Norway will now have to bear a specific label. In a statement issued on Friday, the Norwegian government announced that the origin “Israel” was only suitable for products coming from territories under Israeli control on June 4, 1967.
“Foodstuffs originating from areas occupied by Israel must be labeled with the area where the product comes from and (indicate) whether it comes from an Israeli settlement if this is the case”, detailed the government. The measure will therefore apply to the occupied territories of the Golan Heights and the West Bank “including East Jerusalem”, according to the Norwegian government. It mainly concerns imports of wine, olive oil, fruit and vegetables.
This decision “will negatively affect bilateral relations between Israel and Norway, as well as the relevance of Norway to promote relations between Israel and the Palestinians”, reacted this Saturday the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a press release. Israeli diplomacy thus alludes to the role of mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that Norway has been trying to play for years, with the main example of the Oslo agreements in the 1990s.
No “boycott of Israel”
In a statement to the Norwegian agency NTB, the head of diplomacy of the Scandinavian country affirmed that it was “in no way a boycott of Israel” and that the boycott remained according to Oslo “a bad policy “.
This choice of specific labeling was already made by the European Commission in 2015 and recommended to the Member States then confirmed by a decision of the Court of Justice of the EU in 2019. The decision of the European justice, recalls Oslo, had the basis that “consumers are not misled by a lack of labeling on the origin of products”.
Under the Trump administration, the United States announced “Israel” labeling for products from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Israeli settlement, illegal under international law, has continued under every Israeli government since 1967.