ISRAELI LEADERS welcomed yesterday’s decision by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) accepting Israel as a member.
The move was a stamp of approval for the country’s economy that will boost its credit rating and strengthen ties with foreign investors, they said.
Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said this was a big day for Israel – the culmination of a 16-year effort to join the organisation. He predicted Israel would achieve its target of becoming one of the 15 leading developed countries in the world.
Mr Netanyahu stressed the diplomatic significance of the vote, especially “at a time when we keep hearing lamentations over Israel’s international isolation”. He thanked the 31 member states for voting unanimously to accept Israel. “Any one of them could have voted ‘No’ and vetoed our inclusion. They chose not to do so,” he said.
Ireland, with Norway and Switzerland, had expressed reservations over the Israeli membership bid, criticising Israel’s ongoing occupation of the West Bank and the fact that Israeli settlements are not treated as a separate economic entity. However, all three states eventually voted to accept Israel.
In recent weeks the Palestinians had mounted a campaign to block Israel’s bid, arguing that Israel infringes Palestinian human rights and violates OECD values.
Estonia and Slovenia were also accepted as OECD members yesterday.
OECD secretary-general Angel Gurria, speaking at a Paris news conference, said the new members “will contribute to a more plural and open OECD that is playing an increasingly important role in the global economic architecture”. The official announcement of accession will be made at the OECD’s annual ministerial council meeting in Paris later this month.
Also yesterday, an Israeli court cleared for publication news of the arrest of two Israeli Arabs on suspicion of committing serious security offences, including espionage and contact with the Lebanese Shia group Hizbullah.
The two suspects were named as Amir Makhoul (42), head of Ittijah – an umbrella group for Arab NGOs in Israel – from Haifa, and Omar Sayid (40), an activist for the Balad Arab political party, from Kfar Kana.
Israel’s military censor lifted a gagging order on the case yesterday, allowing some details of the case to be reported. Websites and blogs had already been reporting the story extensively, despite the gagging order – in similar fashion to the recent case of Anat Kam, the Israeli soldier who leaked secret army documents to an Israeli journalist.
Israeli Arab groups are campaigning in solidarity with the two arrested men, accusing Israel of attempting to criminalise political activism. They protested the Israeli policy of issuing gagging orders on such stories.
“We see the steps taken by the security establishment as part of an extreme right-wing policy,” said Jafar Farah, the director of the Israeli Arab NGO Mossawa. “In democratic countries, publication of information is not forbidden the way it is in Israel. This enables the security establishment to do as it likes and then sell lies to the general public.”