Europe threatens to put pressure on settlements with product labeling

It's symbolic that the official credential presentation ceremony of EU Ambassador Lars Faaborg-Andersen to Israeli President Shimon Peres, which had been scheduled for Dec. 16, was delayed because of the snowstorm. The head of the EU delegation had landed in Israel in the early autumn, to a cloudy climate between Brussels and Jerusalem.

The rift between the EU and Israel over the settlement policy has further deepened on the backdrop of the sharp criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against the role that the EU mission and the three European countries played in the negotiations with Iran in Geneva.

The veteran Danish civil servant didn’t need to take special driving lessons to find his way in the bumpy road called the "peace process." At the beginning of the 21st century, when Denmark held the presidency of the EU, Faaborg-Andersen served as the director of the Foreign Ministry’s Middle East and North Africa Department in Copenhagen, and was a co-author of the Quartet's “Road Map.” More than 10 years after this document was adopted unanimously by the UN Security Council [and even anchored in Resolution 1515], he finds himself almost at the same spot.

On Dec. 17, when the headlines focused on a crisis in the negotiations over the issue of Israeli military presence in the Jordan Valley, I found Faaborg-Andersen cautiously optimistic. "Yes," he confirms, "the United States has put a security proposal on the table, quite favorable to the points of view held by the Israeli government, insisting for instance on an Israeli military presence on the Jordanian border for a certain period of time." One the other hand, he shows zero tolerance for settlement activity. "We will increase political pressure to go ahead with the labeling" (of the products made in the settlements), says the ambassador.