Six months after the refusal of Unilever, the owner of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, to allow its Israeli franchisee Avi Singer to sell the ice cream in Judea and Samaria - the discussion on the issue is expected to resume.
Israel Today has learned that the head of the new competition authority, Adv. Michal Cohen, will have to give his opinion on the issue in the coming weeks.
Recall, in July last year, Unilever Global announced to Singer, which employs 169 people in the periphery, that it would not renew its contract with it at the end of this year due to its demand not to sell the company's products in Judea and Samaria, in violation of Israeli law.
To understand the legal path one has to go back 21 years, to 2001 and Unilever's takeover of the global Ben & Jerrys.
Sources at the company say that in order to approve the deal, Unilever needed the approval of the then antitrust commissioner, Dror Strum, because it meant that Unilever would own two subsidiaries in Israel: Strauss Ice Cream and Ben & Jerry's Israel, and this fact could harm competition.
Strum's condition for approving the transaction was that Unilever must not restrict in any way the market shares of any of the companies it owns.
Unilever Headquarters in Rotterdam, Photo: GettyImages
But six months ago, when the boycott of Judea and Samaria was announced, Unilever allegedly violated the agreement in its demand not to sell Ben & Jerry's ice cream in Judea and Samaria, and actually intervened in the company's market share by removing the brand from Israel and harming both Israeli workers and competition.
In recent months, Avi Singer has contacted the competition commissioner in Israel three times to intervene in the matter and demand clear answers from Unilever.
So far, more than five months later, the commissioner has not intervened, and Singer has not received any satisfactory answer.
It should also be noted that Unilever Global cannot declare that it will continue to market the ice cream in Israel without the Israeli franchisee, because under Israeli law the company is not allowed to boycott Judea and Samaria, and any such boycott means overriding the 2011 boycott law.
In the coming weeks, we will know whether the new competition commissioner, Adv. Cohen, who before taking office made dramatic moves in the food market, will also intervene in this case and use the legal tools at her disposal in order not to harm competition in the ice cream market in Israel.
Meanwhile, pressure on the global Unilever company is mounting, and its share has fallen by more than 20% since the affair exploded six months ago.
This is while its direct competitors in the food sector enjoyed a surge in the capital market at the time.
The Competition Authority stated that "the application is being examined, the complainants are in ongoing dialogue with the Competition Authority and know that the processing of their application is advanced."
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