{"id":275572,"date":"2026-02-05T14:47:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T14:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/275572\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T14:47:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T14:47:09","slug":"irelands-attorney-general-challenges-sanctions-on-israeli-settlements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/275572\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland’s Attorney-General challenges sanctions on Israeli settlements"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ireland<\/a>‘s top government lawyer has raised several “significant” legal and practical issues in long-awaited advice on whether planned curbs on trade with Israeli settlements should be extended to services, a junior minister said on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Ireland has been preparing a law to curb trade with settlements in the West Bank, facing pressure<\/a> at home to widen the scope of the ban from goods to services, while Israel and the United States want the bill scrapped.<\/p>\n

Ireland has been one of the European Union’s most outspoken critics of Israel’s assault in Gaza<\/a>. But sources told Reuters last October that the bill was set to be limited to goods after lobbying by US businesses based in the country.<\/p>\n

“The advice, which is detailed and extensive, identifies a number of significant legal and practical issues with the regulation by a member state of trade in services with a country or territory outside the EU,” Neale Richmond, a junior minister at the Department of Foreign Affairs, told parliament.<\/p>\n

“Following detailed consideration by officials in the department, clarification has been sought from the Attorney General on a number of legal issues… Any legislation must be legally robust (and) able to withstand challenge.”<\/p>\n

Dublin first committed to introducing legislation in October 2024. Ministers have for months blamed delays in progressing the bill on the need to await the attorney general’s advice on the inclusion of services.<\/p>\n

Limiting the bill to goods only would cover only a handful of products imported from Israeli<\/a> settlements, such as fruit, which are worth 200,000 euros ($234,660) a year.<\/p>\n

Adding services could entangle multinational companies and other Irish firms doing business in Israel in technology and other industries. Richmond reiterated concerns by other ministers that including services would be “considerably more complex.”<\/p>\n

Within the EU, Slovenia, Spain, the Netherlands, and Belgium all followed Ireland in either committing to or introducing bans on trade with Israeli settlements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland‘s top government lawyer has raised several “significant” legal and practical issues in long-awaited advice on whether planned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1685,50,85,12110,46,43,86095,1032,77],"class_list":["post-275572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-european-union","tag-gaza","tag-il","tag-ireland","tag-israel","tag-news","tag-settlements-israel","tag-united-states","tag-west-bank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}