Congress: 104 · Status: active · Israel/Palestine classification: neutral
Data (JSON) — machine-readable record of this bill (identifiers, sponsor, classification, actions, and the member-by-member vote breakdown).
Official record on Congress.gov — full text, actions, and cosponsor history for S 1469.
Sponsor: Brown, Hank (R-CO)
Warm Peace Act of 1995 - Amends the United States-Israel Free Trade Area Implementation Act to authorize the President to proclaim the elimination or modification of any existing duty in order to exempt any article from duty if: (1) the article is wholly the growth, product or manufacture of the West Bank or Gaza Strip or a qualifying industrial zone; and (2) the article is imported directly from such Area or zone, and the sum of the materials and processing costs of such article is not less than 35 percent of the appraised value of such product at the time it enters into the United States. Authorizes the President to: (1) treat such articles as items of Israel for purposes of the free trade agreement entered into between the United States and Israel in 1985; and (2) include the value of materials and processing costs of such articles as values and costs under such agreement.
The bill would extend US-Israel free trade agreement benefits to goods made in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, allowing the President to eliminate tariffs on those products if they meet a 35 percent domestic content threshold and are imported directly from those territories. Products from qualifying industrial zones would be treated the same as Israeli goods under the 1985 US-Israel trade deal.
This directly affects Palestinian economic access to US markets post-Oslo Accords. The bill's findings explicitly state that excluding Palestinian goods from trade benefits 'economically penalizes the Palestinian Authority,' making Palestinian trade integration a stated legislative purpose alongside the US-Israel relationship.