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Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni (L) welcomes British Foreign Secretary David Miliband in Jerusalem on Sunday.
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JERUSALEM-LONDON (EJP)---British Foreign Minister David Miliband arrived in Israel on Sunday amid growing tensions after Britain's recent bid to press its European Union partners to stop Israeli exports to the EU that are manufactured in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Britain sees such exports as a breach of a 2000 EU-Israel free trade agreement and an encouragement to settlement expansion.
Israel is said to be infuriated by London’s initiative, which it sees as an attempt to force its hand on the settlement issue.
Many settlements thrive on growing out-of-season fruit and vegetables for the export market, such as bananas, avocados, cherry tomatoes and herbs. Others export factory-made goods, or skin-care products such as the Ahava brand made from the salty muds of the Dead Sea in the Jordan Valley.
According to the British press, several supermarket chains such as Marks & Spencer and Asda have already pulled products from the West Bank but critics are concerned that some others have merely labelled items as produce of “the West Bank”, without indicating the exact source.
"We know of the British concern referring to this matter," Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said. "We have been involved for some time now in dialogue with our British counterparts in order to find a way to solve this issue."
Miliband raised the issue on Sunday with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with whom he had "a clear exchange of views".
"The Foreign Secretary made it clear that Britain was not trying to move the goalposts on the agreement but rather to follow up on representations which have been made to us on the workings of the system," a British spokeswoman said after the meeting.
Israel says that it has no legal mechanism to label products by their geographical origin, and insists that the current system, whereby EU customs officers check the origin of goods by a postcode supplied with the product, is a better system.
“This is 100 per cent political and zero per cent economic,” said one Israeli official.
The British minister arrived in the region amid renewed violence in and around the Gaza Strip that threatened to end a five-month-old calm in the area.
Palestinian in the Hamas-controlled territory continued to fire rockets against southern Israel on Sunday, wounding one person.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told Miliband that she expected the international community to support the Jewish state's tough stand in Gaza.
"Israel can not just watch its citizens being attacked... The international community can not turn a blind-eye," Livni said.
Miliband, who will tour the Israeli town of Sderot together with Defence Minister Ehud Barak on Monday, said he was "looking forward to showing solidarity in my visit tomorrow."
After Israel, Miliband will travel to the West Bank for talks with Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas.