It’s been another busy month here in Tel Aviv.

One of the highlights was the mid-May visit by British Trade and Investment Minister Lord Mervyn Davies to Israel and the Palestinian Authority. In Israel, Lord Davies met his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, Bank of Israel Governor, Prof. Stanley Fischer, leading Israeli businessmen and representatives from Israeli companies operating and investing in the UK. Lord Davies was very impressed by what he saw and experienced here in Israel. In a speech to leading Israeli businessmen, he highlighted the excellent trade relations between the UK and Israel and announced his plans to lead a high-level delegation of British businessmen to Israel in the near future.  This was the second visit by a UK Trade and Investment Minister to Israel in less than a year: Lord Davies’ predecessor Lord Digby Jones visited Israel in July 2008 with a 20-strong business delegation as part of Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s visit to Israel.

Lord Davies stressed the underlying strengths of the British economy and also praised Israel for becoming a world leader in the areas of technology and life sciences. This was a particularly timely comment given the visit to Israel just a week earlier of a delegation of seven British researchers under the Science Network Development Scheme (SNDS), overseen by the British Council.

In my last post, I talked about the flourishing business ties between the UK and Israel – which Lord Davies got a first-hand look at. You might have heard about last month’s call by the Scottish Trade Unions Congress for a boycott of Israeli products. However, there is also good news on the trade union front: a global organisation called TULIP - Trade Unions Linking Israel and Palestine – was launched this month and is a new worldwide movement which believes in engaging with workers and their unions in Israel and Palestine, promoting cooperation and reconciliation. This organisation already has the support of union voices in the UK, as well as the major Israeli and Palestinian trade unions. According to an article by their executive members in the Jerusalem Post, they do not believe in boycotts, divestment and sanctions, but rather in peace and in a two-state solution to the conflict.

And for all those of you who have been closely following our campaign on the whisky front, I’d like to reassure you all that we are still fighting the good fight to abolish what we see as a discriminatory tax on Scotch whisky in Israel, which is much higher than the tax levied on any other imported alcoholic beverage: Lord Davies made a point of bringing up the issue during his meeting with Minister Ben-Eliezer.

I hope too that you are now following us on Twitter. You can also contact me at ambassador.telaviv@gmail.com.

Tom Phillips
31 May 2009