David Cronin
14 November 2024
An EU team visits the new prison in the Jenin area of the occupied West Bank. (EUPOL COPPS)
Annexation is back on the agenda.
Bezalel Smotrich, a senior Israeli government minister, is threatening that 2025 will be the “year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.”
If he is serious – and there’s no reason to suspect the self-proclaimed “fascist homophobe” is bluffing – then we can expect Israel will soon formally claim ownership of the Palestinian land it has stolen in the West Bank.
Of course, Israel will not include a confession to land theft in any announcement. Calling the West Bank “Judea and Samaria” is a way of asserting a biblically-ordained “right” to a territory Israel has occupied since 1967.
No other nation recognizes that “right.” But Smotrich and his colleagues are hoping that the US will do so – once Donald Trump is inaugurated as president in January.
Mike Huckabee, Trump’s pick as US ambassador to Israel, has already signaled that annexation could occur.
Will the European Union prove less acquiescent than Trump?
Four years ago, a formal annexation of Israel’s settlement blocs in the West Bank seemed imminent. At the time, the EU warned that any such move would inevitably have consequences for its relationship with Israel.
With the benefit of hindsight, there are reasons to doubt that Brussels officials regarded their own warnings as credible.
Genocide should be an even bigger red line than formal annexation. Yet the EU has kept on cooperating with Israel as it wages a war of extermination against Gaza.
Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, has condemned Smotrich’s new threat on the basis that it jeopardizes “any prospects for” a two-state solution.
The endless repetition of the two-state mantra does not alter an unpalatable truth: The European Union has paved the way for annexation.
It has done so by playing a significant role in carving up the West Bank.
Under the Oslo accords – signed in the 1990s between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) – the territory was divided into three zones. The largest zone – Area C – comprises more than 60 percent of the West Bank and encompasses Israel’s main settlements.
As Israel’s domination was essentially guaranteed when the accords were being implemented, the Israeli authorities were easily able to exploit them so that colonization could be ramped up. The logical next step is to do precisely what Smotrich is proposing: annex Area C.
Solitary confinement
By enforcing the Oslo accords, the European Union has helped to corral Palestinians into a sliver of their historic homeland.
For most of the past two decades, the EU has assumed responsibility for training the Palestinian Authority’s police force and prison administrators.
That force is obligated to keep out of Area C. In the other parts of the West Bank, it is completely subservient to Israel.
Its subservience has been emphasized each time this year that Israel has invaded Area A of the West Bank – the largest Palestinian towns and cities. The PA’s forces were, for all intents and purposes, absent as Israel killed and maimed Palestinians, many of them children.
Israel’s raids of Jenin and Tulkarm in August and September lasted for 10 days. It was the longest such offensive against the West Bank since 2002 – when the notoriously bellicose Ariel Sharon was Israel’s prime minister.
Grotesquely, the EU spent the days and weeks before, during and after the raids in August and September helping the Palestinian Authority to establish a new prison just outside Jenin.
Through a freedom of information request, I have obtained several reports drawn up by the EU’s policing mission in the West Bank on that prison.
They describe how the prison – named the Barghasha Rehabilitation Correction and Rehabilitation Centre – has eight solitary confinement cells.
As the documents have been censored, it is not known what comments the EU team made about solitary confinement, though it undertook to raise concerns about the privacy of detainees.
I contacted the EU policing mission asking if it was seeking to avoid the use of solitary confinement in Palestine. The mission, which goes by the acronym EUPOL COPPS, refused to answer my question, bar claiming that its work on detention is “always aligned with international standards.”
The Palestinian Authority has a record of coupling solitary confinement with other cruelty toward prisoners.
In 2022, a number of detainees went on hunger strike after they had been arrested by PA forces. Amnesty International and other human rights groups documented how they were placed in solitary confinement, as well as being physically tortured.
EUPOL COPPS has publicly lauded the new prison beside Jenin as a “model” rehabilitation center.
The internal documents I have obtained indicate that there is something quite murky behind the “model.”
The new prison has been set up ostensibly to address overcrowding in other jails.
One of the internal papers indicates that the EU team held discussions on 29 August – the day after Israel’s invasion of Jenin began – with a brigadier serving the Palestinian Authority. The paper notes that “the brigadier will ask for coordination from the Israeli authorities for the transport of the prisoners” to Jenin from other jails.
Another document indicates that Israel checks “electricity equipment” in the prison.
The way such “coordination” and “checks” are treated as purely practical belies the fact that Israel is calling the shots more than ever.
The destruction of Gaza and the increased violence by Israel’s soldiers and settlers in the West Bank are aimed at ousting Palestinians from their homeland.
Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on Palestine, stated last month that “the devastation inflicted on Gaza is now metastasizing in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”
She observed that Israel as a state is “predicated on the goal of Palestinian erasure.”
Opening a “model” prison does not magically change how Israel is not only depriving Palestinians of basic freedom but ultimately trying to wipe them out. And the European Union’s propaganda cannot obscure how it is helping Israel to advance its objectives.
Why the EU won’t divorce Israel
David Cronin
Josep Borrell has advocated stronger EU-Israel relations for most of the past five years. (Lukasz Kobus / European Union)
Josep Borrell is turning into Mister Angry now that his term as European Union’s foreign policy chief is almost over. In one recent comment, he argued that it is “high time” to end the “illegal occupation” of the West Bank and Gaza.
Borrell has nothing to lose by being blunt and accurate.
There is zero prospect of a swift reconciliation between him and the Israeli government, which has baselessly smeared Borrell as an anti-Semite. And if anyone complains about how he calls the occupation “illegal,” Borrell can point to a ruling issued by the International Court of Justice in July.
Yet it will take more than a few strident comments to compensate for how Borrell advocated stronger relations with Israel during most of his five-year term.
He enjoyed some success in that respect. In 2022, the EU-Israel Association Council – a high-level forum of dialogue – was revived after it had been mothballed for a decade.
Nor should Borrell’s anger disguise how the Brussels bureaucracy has kept on doing business with Israel as it slaughters people in Gaza and Lebanon.
Last month the EU announced that it was giving a “mission label” to Eilat, a city in Israel. The “label” – which is supposed to help local authorities gain greater access to funding – rewards plans aimed at achieving “climate neutrality.”
Praising an Israeli authority for “climate neutrality” is a warped joke considering that the war against Gaza has been an environmental disaster. By one estimate, the quantity of carbon released during its first 120 days exceeded what 26 low polluting countries would emit in an entire year.
Crass incongruity
Another example of crass incongruity can be found in how the EU recently approved a scientific research grant for a pancreatitis project run by Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The grant was signed on 21 October – just a few days after Israel attacked two of the three hospitals still functioning (albeit barely) in northern Gaza.
Why is the EU prepared to support Israeli medical projects at the very same time Israel is annihilating Palestine’s medical system?
A clue can be found in an internal EU briefing document I obtained via a freedom of information request. Dating from December 2021, it argues that Israel’s participation in Horizon Europe, the EU’s science program, is valuable.
“For the EU, we benefit from Israel’s excellence, top-notch innovation capacity in our key priority areas (green, digital, public health), as well as a substantial financial contribution,” it says.
The financial contribution was “very important” at the time “in view of the uncertainty” around whether Britain would be involved with Horizon Europe, the paper (see below) adds.
These few sentences are revealing. Countries taking part in Horizon Europe from outside the EU pay to do so.
After Britain left the European Union in 2020, it was no longer involved with EU research activities for a few years.
Britain eventually joined Horizon Europe in January 2024. During its absence, some Brussels insiders evidently saw Israel as akin to a replacement for Britain – at least when it came to the research program, a major focus of EU expenditure.
Josep Borrell is the second Spaniard to hold the post of the EU’s foreign policy chief.
When his compatriot Javier Solana was nearing the end of his term in that job, he called Israel “a member of the European Union without being a member of the institution.”
Solana singled out scientific research cooperation with Israel as being “very important” at that time – October 2009.
EU insiders have continued making the same argument since then.
For quite a few people in Brussels, the relationship with Israel is regarded as a type of marriage. No matter what barbarity Israel resorts to, the EU hierarchy will not dare contemplate divorce.
David Cronin
7 November 2024
Josep Borrell has advocated stronger EU-Israel relations for most of the past five years. (Lukasz Kobus / European Union)
Josep Borrell is turning into Mister Angry now that his term as European Union’s foreign policy chief is almost over. In one recent comment, he argued that it is “high time” to end the “illegal occupation” of the West Bank and Gaza.
Borrell has nothing to lose by being blunt and accurate.
There is zero prospect of a swift reconciliation between him and the Israeli government, which has baselessly smeared Borrell as an anti-Semite. And if anyone complains about how he calls the occupation “illegal,” Borrell can point to a ruling issued by the International Court of Justice in July.
Yet it will take more than a few strident comments to compensate for how Borrell advocated stronger relations with Israel during most of his five-year term.
He enjoyed some success in that respect. In 2022, the EU-Israel Association Council – a high-level forum of dialogue – was revived after it had been mothballed for a decade.
Nor should Borrell’s anger disguise how the Brussels bureaucracy has kept on doing business with Israel as it slaughters people in Gaza and Lebanon.
Last month the EU announced that it was giving a “mission label” to Eilat, a city in Israel. The “label” – which is supposed to help local authorities gain greater access to funding – rewards plans aimed at achieving “climate neutrality.”
Praising an Israeli authority for “climate neutrality” is a warped joke considering that the war against Gaza has been an environmental disaster. By one estimate, the quantity of carbon released during its first 120 days exceeded what 26 low polluting countries would emit in an entire year.
Crass incongruity
Another example of crass incongruity can be found in how the EU recently approved a scientific research grant for a pancreatitis project run by Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The grant was signed on 21 October – just a few days after Israel attacked two of the three hospitals still functioning (albeit barely) in northern Gaza.
Why is the EU prepared to support Israeli medical projects at the very same time Israel is annihilating Palestine’s medical system?
A clue can be found in an internal EU briefing document I obtained via a freedom of information request. Dating from December 2021, it argues that Israel’s participation in Horizon Europe, the EU’s science program, is valuable.
“For the EU, we benefit from Israel’s excellence, top-notch innovation capacity in our key priority areas (green, digital, public health), as well as a substantial financial contribution,” it says.
The financial contribution was “very important” at the time “in view of the uncertainty” around whether Britain would be involved with Horizon Europe, the paper (see below) adds.
These few sentences are revealing. Countries taking part in Horizon Europe from outside the EU pay to do so.
After Britain left the European Union in 2020, it was no longer involved with EU research activities for a few years.
Britain eventually joined Horizon Europe in January 2024. During its absence, some Brussels insiders evidently saw Israel as akin to a replacement for Britain – at least when it came to the research program, a major focus of EU expenditure.
Josep Borrell is the second Spaniard to hold the post of the EU’s foreign policy chief.
When his compatriot Javier Solana was nearing the end of his term in that job, he called Israel “a member of the European Union without being a member of the institution.”
Solana singled out scientific research cooperation with Israel as being “very important” at that time – October 2009.
EU insiders have continued making the same argument since then.
For quite a few people in Brussels, the relationship with Israel is regarded as a type of marriage. No matter what barbarity Israel resorts to, the EU hierarchy will not dare contemplate divorce.
No comments:
Post a Comment