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Logo of the Red Electoral Alliance, promoter of the boycott
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| By Associated Press December 23, 2005 |
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A Norwegian county's decision to boycott Israeli products because of its occupation of Palestinian areas has outraged pro-Israel groups.
Soer-Trondelag became the first province in Norway to bar the purchase of Israeli goods when the provincial board voted on Dec. 16 to impose the boycott.
Torill Skaerseth, a board representative from the far-left Red Electoral Alliance, said she hopes the boycott will spread to other Norwegian provinces.
"We see Israel as an occupying force that could be compared with the apartheid regime in South Africa," she told the regional newspaper Adresseavisen. "We also want to campaign for the people of Soer Trondelag to also boycott."
Although the economic impact would be insignificant, the political signal angered Jewish groups.
In a statement issued in New York on Tuesday, the Anti-Defamation League condemned the decision.
"It is shocking and ironic that this one-sided boycott effort comes at a time when Israel is making a series of dramatic steps toward peace, including the recent withdrawal from Gaza," the league's U.S. national director Abraham H. Foxman said in a statement.
Norway has been an active mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, most notably by secretly negotiating the now-tattered Oslo peace agreement in 1993. It also sought to nurture the process by awarding the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize to Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
The Norwegian national government has not imposed or called for any boycott.
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