Final week, the European Parliament approved an modification to dam €20 million ($23 million) in help to the United Nations Aid and Works Company for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) if rapid adjustments selling “coexistence and tolerance” with the Israeli occupation should not made to Palestinian college textbooks.
In line with the modification, the Palestinian curricula should promote peace with the Israeli occupation based mostly on the two-state answer, which the EU nonetheless claims is the very best and solely solution to remedy Israel’s settler-colonial enterprise. The EU additionally wished the Palestinian curricula to be purged from alleged hate speech towards Israel.
However what has the EU completed to forestall hate speech uttered by Israeli officers towards Palestinians? What has the EU, which protects the Israeli occupation and forges strategic partnerships with it, completed to guard the Palestinians who’ve endured greater than 70 years of Israeli violations and aggression?
Going again to the current previous we see that the EU didn’t demand Israel to cease placing Palestinian civilians in Gaza in Could on the time when the occupation military killed greater than 200 Palestinian civilians, together with greater than 60 kids, and injured greater than 1,500 others over a interval of 11 days.
The EU, as a substitute, condemned the Palestinian resistance which fought again towards the continual and barbaric Israeli bombardment of principally civilian amenities and houses. “We condemn the rocket assaults by Hamas and different terrorist teams on the Israeli territory. And we totally help Israel’s proper to self-defense,” EU Overseas Coverage Chief Josep Borrell said.
Right here the EU declared its full help for the sort of “self-defense” which targets kids, unarmed ladies and the aged, in addition to civil infrastructure.
The EU has completed little to maintain the two-state answer as a viable choice, however is preserving it going “on the stage of rhetoric” solely, the Centre for European Reform’s Beth Oppenheim has mentioned.
READ: A badly-wounded ambulance driver is now an inspirational champion weightlifter; I salute him
The Israeli occupation state will not be within the two-state answer and has been doing its finest to make it unviable by means of the continual growth of unlawful Jewish-only settlements. The UN Safety Council has branded Israeli settlements as unlawful and as violations of the Geneva Conventions, however the EU has completed nothing to power these actions to stop.
All of the whereas, the occupation has imposed a stifling air, floor and sea blockade on the Gaza Strip, making life nearly unlivable. Palestinians stay with inadequate electrical energy, extreme lack of medical tools, shortages in medication, restricted entry to wash water, strict restrictions on their motion in and from the besieged enclave and the lack of these in want of pressing medical care to entry it overseas or within the occupied West Financial institution.
An image taken on Could 18, 2021 reveals a normal view of EU ambassadors with European Excessive Consultant of the Union for Overseas Affairs, Josep Borrell throughout a particular video convention of European Overseas Ministers to debate current developments within the Center East particularly Palestine-Israel in Brussels. [OLIVIER HOSLET/POOL/AFP via Getty Images]
“Israel’s coverage of de facto annexation within the West Financial institution and its blockade of Gaza violate worldwide legislation,” Oppenheim mentioned. However the Israeli “prime minister nurtured relationships with intolerant, nativist governments in Europe, sowing division within the EU and paralysing its decision-making on Israel-Palestine,” she added.
Regardless of the demise of the peace course of and the prospects of the two-state answer, “bilateral relationship between Israel and the EU has continued to deepen with out circumstances… They’ve signed over a dozen bilateral agreements to complement the overarching Affiliation Settlement in areas together with police co-operation (2018), growth (2018), aviation (2013), agriculture (2012) and trade (2010). Israel participates in EU analysis and innovation programmes, and Israeli college students can participate within the instructional trade programme Erasmus+.”
“The EU is Israel’s largest commerce accomplice, comprising a 3rd of Israel’s whole exports, and Israel was the EU’s twenty seventh most vital accomplice in 2018.” This proves that the problem will not be associated to hate speech or selling the peace course of, however is one based mostly on shared pursuits and advantages.
The EU is ready to take punitive measures that will power Israel to cease its crimes and human rights violations, however it doesn’t have the political will to place actual stress on Israel. In 2014, “the EU agreed swiftly to impose hefty financial sanctions focusing on Russia’s monetary, vitality and defence sectors when Moscow seized the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea from Ukraine – land that Russia nonetheless holds,” a special report by Reuters says. Thus, if the EU has the desire to take actual motion, it might probably achieve this with out hesitation.
READ: If Biden is cutting aid to Egypt over human rights violations, why doesn’t he cut aid to Israel?
Many analysts and critics imagine that the EU member states could make distinction concerning the Israeli-Palestinian battle. Nations which help taking motion towards Israeli crimes and violations of worldwide legislation ought to unite and mobilise towards the violations. They need to additionally recognise the State of Palestine.
In relation to Israeli crimes towards Palestinians, the one phrases the EU has is “involved” and “nervous”, whereas stressing the occupation state’s “proper to self-defense”. The place the acts of the reputable – beneath worldwide legislation – Palestinian resistance is anxious, the EU chooses “terrorists”, “aggression” and “assaults”. The bloc continues to defend the Israeli occupation in worldwide boards.
Andrea Dessì from Social Europe, a Rome-based assume tank, wrote: “When coupled with the authorized and diplomatic cowl for Israel offered by Europe and the US in worldwide fora, such insurance policies quantity to complicity in Israel’s coverage of creeping annexation and settler-colonial violence towards the Palestinians.”
All of this and plenty of different conditions show that the EU will not be solely complicit, however shamefully concerned within the violations and crimes towards Palestinians. The EU, whether it is critical about its help for peace, should leverage its energy to take action, however the many years of silence and help for bias US insurance policies show that’s not it is main purpose.
The views expressed on this article belong to the writer and don’t essentially replicate the editorial coverage of Center East Monitor.
