DUBLIN: The Irish government approved Tuesday the drafting of a bill to ban the import of goods from Israeli settlements considered illegal under international law, an unprecedented move for a European Union member.

The move comes after the International Court of Justice last year said Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip was illegal under international law, in an advisory opinion the Irish government said guided its decision.

“The government has agreed to advance legislation prohibiting trade in goods with illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory,” a foreign ministry spokesperson told AFP.

“It is the government’s view that this is an obligation under international law.”

The settlements include residential, agricultural and business interests that lie outside Israel’s internationally recognized borders.

Before the cabinet decision, Foreign Minister Simon Harris told reporters he hoped other EU countries would follow Ireland’s lead.

“What I hope today is when this small country in Europe makes the decision and becomes one of the first countries, and probably the first country, in the Western world to consider legislation in this space, I do hope it inspires other European countries to join us,” said Harris — also Irish deputy prime minister.

Last May, Ireland — along with Spain, Norway and, a month later, Slovenia — recognized the Palestinian state, drawing retaliatory moves from Israel.

Last month, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that Paris might move to recognize a Palestinian state as early as June.

Tuesday’s move by Dublin comes a week after the EU ordered a review of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, a cooperation deal signed in 1995 that forms the basis for trade ties with Israel.

EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas said “a strong majority” of the 27 member states at a foreign ministers’ meeting backed the move in a bid to pressure Israel.

An Irish import ban would be symbolic and of minimal economic impact, as trade volumes with the territories — limited to goods such as fruit, vegetables and timber — were worth less than one million euros ($1.1 million) between 2020 and 2024.

It “breaks a decades-long, failed deadlock at EU level of criticizing the settlements as illegal and a barrier to peace on the one hand, while providing them with crucial economic support on the other,” said Conor O’Neill, head of advocacy and policy at Christian Aid Ireland, who helped draft a previous version of the Irish legislation in 2018.

“After decades of saying and repeating that illegal settlements are totally illegal and that the EU is opposed to them, this is the first time that words are being matched with action,” O’Neill told AFP.

The foreign ministry spokesperson said an update on the draft legislation would be brought to the government “in the coming weeks.”

The bill is not expected to pass into law before autumn.

MEXICO: Missing persons investigators found 17 bodies in an abandoned house in a central Mexican region plagued by criminal violence, the state prosecutor’s office said.

Ground-penetrating radar and cadaver dogs were used to locate the bodies last week in Irapuato in Guanajuato state, according to a statement released late Monday.

Knives, machetes, pickaxes, and shovels were also found.

Five of the victims — four men and one woman --- have been identified as missing persons, according to prosecutors.

“Their families are being informed,” a Guanajuato state official, Jorge Jimenez, told reporters.

Guanajuato is a thriving industrial hub and home to several popular tourist destinations, but it is also Mexico’s deadliest state due to gang turf wars, according to official homicide statistics.

Criminal violence, most of it linked to drug trafficking, has claimed around 480,000 lives in Mexico since 2006 and left more than 120,000 people missing.

Civil society groups formed by relatives who denounce government inaction risk their own lives searching for remains in unmarked graves, often in areas where cartel gunmen are active.

Much of the violence in Guanajuato is linked to conflict between the Santa Rosa de Lima gang and the Jalisco New Generation cartel, one of the most powerful in the Latin American nation.

Guanajuato recorded more than 3,000 murders last year, the most of any Mexican state, according to official figures.

That was equivalent to just over 10 percent of the nationwide total.