U.S. Plans to Reject Arab Request to Curtail Israel Trade Benefits

Israel will not have its trade benefits curtailed by the United States, despite charges from an Arab-American group that Israel has violated the rights of Palestinian workers.

The information is contained in a recommendation by U.S. Trade Representative Carla Hills to President Bush, who is expected to affirm it next week.

In jeopardy was Israel’s involvement in the 12-year-old Generalized System of Preferences program, or GSP, which allows certain Israeli products — including gold chains and some chemicals — to enter the United States duty-free.

Last August the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee filed a complaint saying Israel should be disqualified for the benefits because of its treatment of Palestinian workers.

It charged, among other things, that Israel deducts 20 percent of the gross wages of residents of the administered territories who are legally registered to work in Israel and that it will not allow them to stay overnight within Israel proper.

Israel did not dispute the charges in subcommittee testimony, but convinced Hill, according to the Long Island newspaper Newsday, that “corrective steps are being taken” and that Israel has made “sufficient progress to warrant a continuation” of the trade benefits.

The key point in Hills’ recommendation, U.S. and Israeli sources said, was not to consider the administered territories as part of Israel.

According to the Jewish Labor Committee, which testified on Israel’s behalf during hearings on the Arab group’s complaint, there are 31 independent trade unions on the West Bank and seven in the Gaza Strip.

Israel is “the only democratic country in the Middle East and the only state with a free trade movement,” it noted.