Palestinians cleanse shops of Israeli settler-made goods

6/29/2010 11:14:40 AM

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories – Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad launched on Monday a new door-to-door campaign aimed at "cleansing" shops in the West Bank of goods produced in Israeli settlements.

The so-called "Shop-to-Shop" campaign is part of a months-old boycott that has seen the Western-backed Palestinian Authority impose fines and even jail sentences on merchants who trade in settlement goods.

"This is a new campaign, and an important part of the efforts, both official and popular, to cleanse the market of all settlements goods by the end of the year," Fayyad told reporters on a visit to a supermarket in Ramallah.

"This is also part of our efforts to bring about economic independence and self-sufficiency on the path to freedom and the end of the occupation," he said, referring to his plan to build the institutions of an independent state by the middle of next year with or without a peace agreement with Israel.

After searching the supermarket with a group of volunteers, mostly university students, and asking about the origin of different goods, Fayyad presented its owner with a certificate of compliance with the ban.

The volunteers plan to visit more than 66,000 shops across the West Bank in the next week to inspect them for settler goods in a move modelled on a similar campaign last month in which they went house to house.

"This campaign is much stronger than throwing stones at the Israeli army," said Ahmad al-Najjar, a 20-year-old volunteer. "These settlements are built on our land so we have to fight them by all means."

Wassal Aweisa, 19, another volunteer, agreed.

"I took part in the first campaign, from house to house, and felt that the people were ready to support it, even though some of them still had settlement goods in their homes," she said.

Earlier this year Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas approved a new law that would punish merchants trading in settlement goods with up to five years in prison and up to 22,000 dollars in fines.

Palestinian economy minister Hassan Abu Libdeh, who accompanied Fayyad on the visit, said the number of Palestinians working in settlements had declined by 25 percent since the boycott was announced.

The government has said it intends to ban Palestinians from working in the settlements but has yet to issue a law against it because of concerns tens of thousands of workers would not be able to find alternative jobs.

The house-to-house campaign has infuriated the settlers, who have referred to it as "an act of terrorism" and called for sanctions against the West Bank economy, which grew at a rate of 8.5 percent last year.

The presence of nearly a half million Israelis in more than 120 settlements scattered across the occupied West Bank and annexed east Jerusalem has long been one of the thorniest issues in the Middle East peace process.