RAMALLAH: The Palestinians on Tuesday stepped up their fight against goods produced in Israeli settlements with a door-to-door campaign to raise awareness of a territory-wide ban.
"This house-to-house campaign is part of the national campaign to combat settlement products and today it has begun in all Palestinian cities," said the project’s coordinator Haitham Kayali.
He said 3,000 Palestinian youths would visit some 427,000 homes across the West Bank to distribute booklets listing banned settlement goods and informing families about the dangers they pose to the struggle for statehood.
They will then hang posters outside the homes affirming that they are free of such goods.
The Palestinians view the presence of some 500,000 Israeli settlers in more than 120 settlements scattered across the West Bank and east Jerusalem, territory seized by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War, as a major threat to the eventual creation of a viable state.
Last month Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas approved a law banning trade in goods produced in settlements following a months-long campaign that has featured the public burning of such products.
Those found guilty of trading in settlement goods face two to five years in prison and up to $22,000 (€16,400) in fines.
The house-by-house campaign is being carried out by the Karameh (Dignity) Fund, established to promote the Palestinian economy and assist those harmed by the new restrictions on trade with the settlements.
