According to official figures released by the Department of Statistics on Thursday, imports from Israel shrank to $31 million between January and April this year from $44 million in the same period of 2009.

The retreat was mainly in the import of vegetables and fruits after activists of a national committee for preventing normalization with the Jewish state forced the Ministry of Agriculture to stipulate that importers of Israeli agricultural products put labels on the goods stating their origin, traders said.

“This facilitated boycotting the Israeli agricultural products by the Jordanian people,” a trader said.

The Israeli Ambassador in Amman has reportedly protested the move and asked the government to reverse its decision to force traders to put labels on products.

The boycott campaign culminated last month by the panel publicly burning symbolic boxes containing Israeli fruits and vegetables at an Amman market last month.

The committee said that it planned to publish backlists of Jordanian traders who conduct business with Israelis.

The campaign for derailing the establishment of normal ties and abrogating the 1994 peace treaty with Israel gained momentum after the 2009 Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip and lately after Israel’s bloody raid on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla in the Mediterranean.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, King Abdallah accused Israel of plunging relations between the two countries to their lowest point since the two countries signed a peace pact in 1994.