Last month, the European Union pushed European- Israeli relations to a new low.
In mid-September, the IDF enforced a High Court of
Justice order to destroy 250 structures built illegally by Palestinian squatters
in the Jordan Valley.
The High Court acted in accordance with the
agreements signed between the Palestinians and Israel. Those agreements gave
Israel sole control over planning and zoning in the Jordan Valley and throughout
the area of Judea and Samaria defined as Area C.
Five days after the IDF
destroyed the illegal structures, Palestinian activists arrived at the site with
tents. Their intention was to act in contempt of the law and of the agreements
the PLO signed with Israel, and to resettle the site.
The Palestinians
did not come alone. They were accompanied by European diplomats. The diplomats
were there to provide diplomatic cover to the Palestinians as they broke the law
and breached the agreements the PLO signed with the Israeli
government.
This would have been bad enough, but in the event, one
European diplomat, Marion Castaing, the cultural attaché at the French Consulate
in Jerusalem, decided that her job didn’t end with providing diplomatic cover
for lawbreakers. She joined them. She punched an Israeli border policeman in the
face.
Rather than apologize to Israel for using European diplomats to
support Palestinians engaged in criminal activity, and for Castaing’s shocking
violence against an Israeli soldier lawfully performing his duties, EU foreign
policy chief Catherine Ashton attacked Israel.
Ashton called the tents,
presumably paid for by European taxpayers, “humanitarian assistance,” and
declared, “The EU deplores the confiscation of humanitarian assistance carried
out by Israeli security forces yesterday in Khirbat al-Makhul.
“EU
representatives have already contacted the Israeli authorities to demand an
explanation and expressed their concern at the incident. The EU underlines the
importance of unimpeded delivery of humanitarian assistance and the
applicability of international humanitarian law in the occupied Palestinian
territory,” Ashton said.
The EU’s role in financing illegal Palestinian
building efforts in the Jordan Valley is not unique. For some time, in contempt
of Israeli law and the agreements signed between Israel and the PLO, the EU has
been financing illegal building by Arabs in Judea, Samaria and
Jerusalem.
What was new in last month’s incident was the deployment of
European diplomats at the scene to provide diplomatic cover for Palestinian
law-breakers, and of course their willingness to physically assault Israeli
security forces.
In recent months, there has been a palpable escalation
of European hostility toward Israel. The significance of this escalation must be
properly understood, for only by understanding precisely what is new in the EU’s
treatment of Israel, will it be possible to develop proper responses to what is
happening.
The incident in the Jordan Valley followed the EU’s
announcement in July that beginning in January 2014, it will impose guidelines
barring cooperation between the EU and EU member nations and Israeli entities
located or operating beyond the 1949 armistice lines. Those guidelines
constitute a low-grade trade war against Israel. They advance the goal of
forcing Israel out of joint undertakings with Europeans and denying us access to
European markets.
The Europeans are so eager to begin their economic war
against Israel that they have launched it even before the guidelines have come
into force. Firms in the Netherlands and Germany involved in waste treatment
projects in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, whose completion would benefit
Palestinians and Israelis alike, have received warnings from their home
governments to cease their operations lest they face legal
consequences.
In addition to barring European-Israeli economic activities
that may even indirectly benefit Jews beyond the 1949 armistice lines, Ashton
has promised to soon introduce EUwide rules requiring member nations to place
special labels on Israeli goods produced by Jews beyond the 1949 armistice
lines.
By placing special labels on goods produced by Israeli Jews in
specific areas of Israel, the EU is shaping European public opinion to view all
Israeli products produced by Jews as morally inferior, and therefore less
desirable than all other products they come into contact with. Foes of Israel
hope this opinion-shaping will lead to the initiation of European consumer
boycotts of Israeli products.
Most Israeli responses to Europe’s
ever-escalating hostility have focused on European hypocrisy. We have repeatedly
decried the unique standard to which the Europeans hold Israel and Israel
alone.
European hypocrisy is infuriating. But it is nothing
new.
It was decades ago that Europe created a separate standard that it
applies only to Israel.
Consider the European’s position on Jerusalem.
Since Israel was established, the Europeans have denied the Jewish state the
right they accord to every other state on earth: the right to determine its
capital city.
Or consider Europe’s position on Israeli communities built
beyond the 1949 armistice lines. Europe wrongly asserts that these communities
are illegal. But even if they were right, Europe’s behavior toward Israel would
still make a mockery of its proclaimed devotion to international law. Europe has
no problem, indeed it has actively supported settlements for citizens of a
belligerent occupying powers in areas ruled through occupation. As Profs. Avi
Bell and Eugene Kontorovich from the Kohelet Policy Forum explained in a recent
paper on the EU’s guidelines, the EU supports settlements by occupying powers in
Northern Cyprus, Abkazia and Western Sahara. In light of this, it is clear that
the guidelines directed against Israel are inherently discriminatory.
The
EU’s supposed commitment to international law is similarly exposed as a sham by
its willingness to turn a blind eye to the Palestinian Authority’s diversion of
EU aid monies to finance terrorism. Despite mountains of evidence accumulated
over the past 13 years that aid is being siphoned off to finance terrorist
attacks against Israel, the EU has refused to take action. And its refusal to
act is itself a breach of international law.
Then there is the EU claim
that its actions are undertaken to advance the cause of peace between Israel and
the Palestinians.
This claim is also not credible. By encouraging the
Palestinians to breach their signed agreements with Israel, and by engaging in
economic warfare against Israel for refusing to capitulate to all Palestinian
demands preemptively, the Europeans are escalating Palestinian
intransigence.
Throughout the years, Europe’s policy has been
inconsistent.
At the same time some European leaders have led the
diplomatic war against Israel, other leaders were cultivating close ties with
the Jewish state. Over the years, Europe signed a series of economic association
and free trade agreements with Israel. Europe has willingly cooperated with
Israel in areas where believed it had something to gain from that
cooperation.
For instance, European nations, and the EU, have cooperated
with Israel in the areas of science, technology, economics, intelligence
gathering and military affairs. Until recent years, there was a distinct
separation between the European leaders who sought to discriminate against
Israel and those who sought cooperation with it.
But recently the
distinction between “good Europe” and “bad Europe” has eroded. What we are
seeing today, and what distinguishes the discriminatory behavior Israel faces
from Europe today from what it has faced from Europe for decades, is the
increased control that anti-Israel forces are exerting over all areas of
European-Israel relations.
Consider European Commission Vice President
Antonio Tajani’s visit to Israel this week. Tajani came to promote business
relations and expand cooperation in science and other fields with Israel. While
here he signed an agreement with Science, Technology and Space Minister Yaakov
Perry that will enable Israelis to participate in the EU’s Galileo satellite
project.
But according to media reports, the only thing Israelis wanted
to discuss with him were the new European guidelines and the fact that they make
it impossible for Israel to participate in the Horizon 2020 scientific research
program. Israel has participated in the program since the mid-1990s. But for
Israel to participate in the upcoming round of the Horizon program, it will have
to discriminate against Israelis based or operating beyond the 1949 armistice
lines. And so Israel will be unable to participate.
Until now, Europeans
like Tajani, who have been interested in fostering cooperation with Israel where
such cooperation benefits Europe, have had no trouble doing so. But now, due to
the economic regulations against Israel, his hands, and those of like-minded
Europeans, are tied by leaders like Ashton whose opposition to Israel has
reached obsessive heights.
There are lessons that Europeans who do not
support the downward trajectory of EU-Israel ties and Israelis need to draw from
the current state of those relations. First, Europeans interested in maintaining
and fostering good relations with Israel need to be willing to confront their
fellow Europeans.
Until now they never questioned the goodwill of those
who claimed that it is illegal for Jerusalem to be Israel’s capital, or for Jews
to live wherever they have property rights in the Land of Israel.
But the
hypocrisy and discrimination inherent in these claims needs to be pointed out.
European supporters of close European-Israeli relations need to show the
duplicitousness of proclamations of devotion to the peace process and
international law by officials like Ashton. If they wish to stop the precipitous
decline in Europe’s relations with Israel, they can no longer pretend that these
claims are open to interpretation.
As for Israel, we need to recognize
first and foremost that we do not control what happens in Europe. In adopting
anti- Israel policies, European leaders are not responding to actions Israel
undertakes. When 40 percent of Europeans tell pollsters they believe that Israel
is enacting a genocide against the Palestinians, it is clear that European views
of Israel are not based on facts of any kind, and certainly not on anything
Israel does.
Moreover, we need to recognize that like our European
friends, we have given the benefit of the doubt to our continental adversaries,
believing their empty claims of commitment to the peace process and
international law. As a consequence, since the outset of the peace process with
the PLO 20 years ago, most of the steps we have taken to demonstrate our good
faith have strengthened those European who wish us ill at the expense of those
who wish us well.
Like our European friends, we need to stop giving a
pass to those who distort the very meaning of international law while making
empty proclamations of support for the cause of peace. Only be exposing the
truth behind the lies will we strengthen our European friends and so increase
the possibility that our relations with Europe may improve one
day.
caroline@carolineglick.com