The European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee called for the EU to help the International Criminal Court to prosecute Israel for war crimes, in a resolution on EU-Palestinian relations on Tuesday.
The resolution said that the committee “regret[s] the limited progress on the ICC infestations in war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the occupied Palestinian territories and commit to help the ICC and its prosecutor move forward with the investigation and the prosecution.”
MEP Evin Incir of the Swedish Social Democrats, the rapporteur for recommendations on the EU’s relations with the Palestinian Authority, spearheaded the measure, which passed with 41 in favor, 24 opposed and nine abstentions. It is scheduled to go to a plenary vote in July.
The members of the European Parliament also expressed concern against what it claimed were Israeli “punitive measures,” such as withholding funds from the Palestinian Authority and limiting construction in Area C, in response to the PA petitioning international legal forums. The funds were, in fact, frozen in response to the PA’s policy of paying terrorists, and the limitations on Area C construction were in response to Palestinians' construction without the required permits, some of which were funded by the EU.
The committee also called to “consider targeted EU measures specifically addressing settlement expansion in the West Bank.”
Legislators wrote: EU should enforce Brussles' policies on Israeli products from Judea, Samaria
The legislators repeatedly wrote that the EU should ensure the enforcement of Brussels’ policies of excluding Israeli products from Judea and Samaria from the EU-Israel Free Trade Agreement and of labeling settlement products as not from Israel.
More broadly, they said that “the principle of legal differentiation between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967 is applied consistently to the full scope of EU bilateral relations with Israel.”
They called for the release of “all political prisoners,” which would include members of EU-designated terrorist organizations, such as Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
The MEPs also “regret the unilateral decisions of some states to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's undivided capital and move their embassies.” Three countries have moved embassies to Jerusalem so far - the US, Guatemala and Kosovo - and Hungary plans to be the first EU member state to do so, though it has yet to set a date.
At the same time, they sought to have the EU treat Jerusalem as Palestinian and “work towards the reopening of Palestinian institutions in annexed East Jerusalem; host regular meetings with Palestinian officials in East Jerusalem and support their engagement in the political, economics social and cultural development of East Jerusalem.”
The resolution also called for closer ties between Brussels and Ramallah in the form of an Association Council, a high-level dialogue meant to strengthen relations between the EU and non-member countries.
Incir called the recommendations a “historic decision.”
“Palestinians have lived under occupation for more than 50 years,” Incir tweeted. “[The] EU must strengthen its cooperation with the [PA], help the people and act to end the occupation. [The] PA also has a responsibility to promote [democracy] and reforms.”
The conservative ECR group attempted to amend the text so that it condemns terrorism and calls for Hamas to immediately return the remains of IDF soldiers Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul and release Israeli civilians Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, but the amendments did not pass. They did succeed in adding a call for international cooperation to prevent the rearmament of terrorist groups in Gaza and the West Bank and for the PA to regain control of the Gaza Strip.
MEP Charlie Weimers of the ECR Group said that it is “a travesty that the Foreign Affairs Committee does not condemn Palestinian terrorism, one of the greatest obstacles to a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
“The text is an absolute embarrassment,” he said. “The left and centrist groups have adopted a text that is far to the left of current EU policy.”