The EU's Lethal Obsession with Israel

by Bassam Tawil 

• What [EU] Representative [Sven] Koopmans forgot to mention that it is the Palestinians who have built tens of thousands of illegal structures in the West Bank, especially in Area C, which, according to the Oslo Accords, is under full Israeli security and civilian jurisdiction.
• Koopmans also forgot to mention that the EU is helping the Palestinian Authority (PA) with the mass-scale illegal construction, paving the way for the de facto annexation of the territory.
• The EU does not interfere anyplace else on the planet other than Area C -- not for the Kurds, the Assyrians, the Yazidis, the Uyghurs, the Kashmiris, the Tibetans or the Greek Cypriots. The Palestinians continue to be the only group on the EU's list of people with whom to interfere. This inordinate attention appears to stem not so much from love for the Palestinians as from hatred for Israel.
• The EU, it seems, has funded literally thousands of illegal Palestinian modular buildings in territory that is legally under Israeli jurisdiction.
• Lately, the EU has been concentrating more on agricultural land: one can acquire a much larger area for a much smaller investment.
• By doing so, the EU is encouraging the Palestinians to engage in unilateral actions in violation of the agreements signed between the Palestinians and Israel.
• This is the same EU that continues to warn Israel not to take any "unilateral actions," and that continues to criticize Israel for building and expanding "illegal" settlements in the West Bank.
• As of 2022, the EU has built 81,317 illegal structures in Area C....
• The EU's commitment to the expansion of illegal Palestinian settlement in Area C persists in full disregard of the Oslo Accords, which the EU purports to uphold.
• "The object is to create continuous Palestinian settlement throughout the West Bank and thereby isolate and strangle Israeli communities," wrote Hillel Frisch, professor of Political Science and Middle Eastern History at Bar-Ilan University, in 2019.
• The 2009 "Fayyad Plan" (officially titled "Palestine: Ending the Occupation, Establishing the State") was -- and remains -- a proposal to create facts on the ground that would end up as a Palestinian state if negotiations do not work out, thereby bypassing the need to negotiate with Israel as agreed to in the Oslo Accords.
• The catch is: If the Palestinians believe that they can be handed a state by some external entity, such as the EU, at no cost to themselves, why should they ever bother to negotiate? For years, in fact, they have avoided coming to the negotiating table, presumably in the hope of precisely such a windfall.
• The best interests of the Jahalin Bedouin were not the main concern of the Palestinian Authority. What was important to the PA was the land -- to take possession of it and then make whatever was built on it appear irreversible.
• [T]hese new facts on the ground, of course, encourage the Palestinians not to negotiate. Why should they, if they can get everything they want by just taking it?
• Fayyad's unilateral plan to create facts on the ground is totally in violation of the Oslo Accords, which state that "neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations."
• At the end of last year, a secret document by the EU's mission in east Jerusalem showed that Brussels is also actively working with, and on behalf of, the Palestinian Authority to take over Area C of the West Bank.
• Koopmans and other senior EU officials apparently know they are acting illicitly: they are doing their utmost to hide the fact that they are actively helping the Palestinians to break the law and violate the agreements signed with Israel.
• Just as Israel does not meddle in the internal affairs of the EU member states, it is time to put an end to the EU's poisonous intrusion into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
• Along the way, the EU might also want to consider the real source of its lethal obsession with Israel.

The EU, it seems, has funded literally thousands of illegal Palestinian modular buildings in territory that is legally under Israeli jurisdiction. By doing so, the EU is encouraging the Palestinians to engage in unilateral actions in violation of the agreements signed between the Palestinians and Israel. Pictured: The illegal Palestinian encampment of Khan Al-Ahmar, located within a few meters of the highway connecting Jerusalem with the Dead Sea and the Jordan Valley. (Image source: TrickyH/Wikimedia Commons)

European Union Special Representative for the Middle East Peace Process Sven Koopmans stated on February 17: "The EU wants build stronger ties with Israel, yet relations sadly remain burdened by the construction of illegal settlements on Palestinian land."

What Koopmans forgot to mention that it is the Palestinians who have built literally tens of thousands of illegal structures in the West Bank, especially in Area C, which, according to the Oslo Accords, is under full Israeli security and civilian jurisdiction.

Koopmans also forgot to mention that the EU is helping the Palestinian Authority (PA) with the mass-scale illegal construction, paving the way for the de facto annexation of the territory.

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