EU hypocritically threatens to penalize Israel over sovereignty.

If Israel declares sovereignty over settlements, the EU has threatened to retaliate with boycotts of diplomatic visits and cancellation of billions in grants for research.

The European Union is planning to impose penalties if Israel puts into action plans to apply sovereignty to settlements in Judea and Samaria it was reported Sunday.

The EU and many of its members have voiced their objection to Israel making any ‘unilateral’ steps in regards to settlements, saying that doing so is a serious threat to the future of the two-state solution. The EU’s unilateral actions iof illegal construction in area C is disregarded.

Oded Eran, Israel’s former ambassador to the EU, and former Israeli ambassador to Germany Shimon Stein say that “declaring the application of sovereignty will bring condemnation and possibly even punishments.”

Stein and Eran noted that the EU doesn’t have the ability to cause significant economic damage to Israel that would discourage the Israeli government from deciding to extend sovereignty, but at the same time they pointed out if the Democrats win the November presidential elections, the European position must be taken into account.

Palestinian takes the European Parliament by Storm

Palestinian Mudar Zahran takes the 

European Parliament by Storm: 

BDS hurts us, 

We want peace

Europeans funding illegal Arab construction on Israeli land?

Arabs are using European Union funding to violate court orders and continue their illegal building near Hebron.

Arabs in the Hirbet Z’nutah outpost have apparently defied a court order by continuing to illegally build structures at the location. Hirbet Z’nutah is located in the middle of an archaeological site in the southern Hebron Hills region of Judea. This time, the Arabs’ illegal construction was reportedly completed using funding from the European Union (EU).

Just six months ago, the High Court suspended demolition of the outpost provided that no additional construction take place. Allegedly flouting that commitment, the Arabs responsible for construction in Hirbet Z’nutah apparently used EU funds to build yet another illegal structure, reported Arutz 7.

“Construction of a school on a protected archaeological site, with EU funding, is a gross and blatant violation of the High Court’s decision, as well as a violation of the European Convention on the Protection of Archaeological Heritage,” said Yishai Hemo to Arutz 7. Hemo serves as Field Coordinator for Judea and Samaria for the Regavim organization, a watchdog that monitors illegal Arab construction

As a result of the latest violation, the NGO Regavim plans to file another petition with the High Court of Justice in the following days.

“The offenders have sharpened their tactical skills, and have managed to pull the wool over the Court’s eyes. They never intended to uphold their commitments in this matter. We will also be petitioning the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to demand that decisive action is taken in light of the European Union’s illegal conduct,” Hemo explained.

While the illegal Arab outpost is located in Area C, and is thus under Israeli control and not subject to Palestinian Authority administration, the new structure flies PA flags.

It remains to be seen whether Israeli authorities will be required to remove the most recent structure, a course of action that has been required several times since the illegal outpost was first started several year ago. In 2012, for example, Israeli authorities had to eliminate makeshift stables and tents set up there.

Agitating the Beduin?

by David M. Weinberg   April 6, 2017

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Know-Comment-Riling-up-the-Beduin-486359

)Ed:- there is a lot of publicity whenever the subject of home demolitions is acted upon. Little is known by journalist of the background of this subject. With uncontrolled expansion of Beduin villages, more and more land is being taken up with no services available.

In spite of tremendous efforts by the government and considerable agreement amongst many Beduin clans, negative external influences are pushing the chances of progress with the Beduin backwards.)

Arab nationalists, the Islamic Movement, and the EU are provoking the Beduin to resist Israel’s benevolent development plans.

 The usual professional anti-Israel activists – rabble-rousing Arab MKs, far-left activists in Israel and from abroad, and some EU officials too – are stirring the Beduin pot to advance an incendiary and false narrative of Israeli dispossession and discrimination.

They are seeking to turn the Beduin issue – a professional planning and social development issue on which Israel is trying to do good – into a nationalist tug-of-war and yet another tool to delegitimize Israel.

It was they, in fact, who forced the breakdown in negotiations in January between Israel’s Beduin Development and Settlement Authority and the villagers of al-Umm Hiran, which led to confrontations and the killing of both a policeman and a local Beduin man.

After a long legal struggle all the way up to the Supreme Court (which they lost), the villagers had mostly agreed on a broad deal with the government for relocation to modern housing. But at the last minute, the radical activists swooped down on the Negev, and shamed and threatened the village leaders into rejecting the understandings reached with the government.

This is the pattern of radical agitation, rejection and violent struggle that could repeat itself over and over again in the coming years, stymieing Israel’s considerate and responsible plan for boosting the Beduin.

This would be a tragedy, because most Beduin undoubtedly want to work cooperatively with the government in lifting their marginalized communities out of poverty and crime; and because the government must seize the opportunity to husband the lands of the Negev for all Israelis – before it is too late.

The battle is being played out in the E1 quadrant as well, where Israel plans to demolish an illegal and provocative Beduin encampment called Khan al-Ahmar, near Ma’aleh Adumim. The EU has threatened Israel with retaliation if it does so, out of “deep concern” for Palestinian rights in Area C of Judea and Samaria. Of course, the Beduin shantytown is there in order to block Israel’s plans to develop E1. And the Italians funded a Beduin school there for the same purpose.

Outrageously, the EU has begun to intervene in Beduin Negev matters, too, monitoring and protesting Israel’s every move – which is gross and hostile interference in Israel’s internal affairs. Essentially, the EU is conflating the Beduin struggle with that of the Palestinians in the West Bank, advancing a narrative of Israel as a colonial occupier against indigenous and oppressed peoples.

AT LEAST 210,000 Beduin live in Israel’s South, making up 30% of the Negev’s population, sprawling uncontrollably and illegally across ever-greater tracts of land in the northern Negev. One-third to one-half the Negev Beduin live in 1,700 “non-recognized” rural settlements where little, if any, municipal services exist, including basic water and sewage infrastructure. There is no municipal planning or taxation.

It’s no surprise that these Beduin communities suffer from extraordinary high rates of unemployment, poverty, criminal activity, violence against women, and Islamic radicalization.

The matter is exacerbated due to the high rate of growth of the Beduin community.

In 2013, the government adopted the “Prawer-Begin” plan, based on the recommendations of a committee chaired by former Supreme Court justice Eliezer Goldberg, and named for a professional team of high-ranking officials headed by Ehud Prawer, and later by MK Bennie Begin. Hundreds of meetings with Beduin leaders were part of the consultative process leading to this point.

Under the plan, some 30,000 of the 100,000 Beduin who live in squalid and illegal encampments were to be relocated, and moved to developed lots in nearby farming, suburban or urban communities, with compensation.

But under pressure from the radicals, the Beduin resisted the plan. And right-wing figures accuse Begin of handing thousands of dunams of land (10 dunams equal 1 hectare) to the Beduin as a gift, without significant legal source for the Beduin claims.

So the Prawer-Begin plan died. It was abandoned, despite the fact that it drew support across Israeli political party lines, and despite the fact that many brave Beduin leaders bucked the bullying of militant Israeli Arab leaders to speak out in favor of the plan.

LAST YEAR, the cabinet adopted Construction Minister Uri Ariel’s revised plan to invest NIS 3 billion over the next five years in upgrading Beduin communities in the Negev. Ten new industrial areas will be established in Beduin areas, NIS 420 million will be invested in improving employment opportunities (including job training programs for Beduin), and NIS 250m. will be spent on developing Negev public transportation routes.

Minister Ariel’s approach is to quietly negotiate tribe by tribe and family by family, to encourage the move of Beduin from wretched to honorable towns; from ramshackle to modern villages; from anarchic to organized and legal settlements. He is acting to save both the Beduin and the Negev.

Of course, social engineering is no easy task, even without the interference of professional agitators who are hell-bent on co-opting the Beduin as a tool against the state. Altering the Beduin patriarchal culture and pre-modern mode of desert living, and integrating the Beduin into Israeli society, will take years of careful negotiation and cautious planning.

The Netanyahu government should be praised, not vilified, for advancing comprehensive, judicious (and very expensive!) plans that will both ensure advancement for the Beduin community and preserve Israel’s lands for the broader public.

Incitement to Murder and Financial Reward

With continuing incitement to murder and the financial rewards offered, when will the EU stop funding the PA.

Continuing to do so defines the EU as accessories to murder

Surprise? The EU Rewards PA Hate

Evelyn Gordon.  Commentary Magazine. 24 June '16.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/europe/european-parliament-rewards-hate/   

   

Hats off to the British. Aside from all the other reasons of Britain’s decision to leave the European Union (i.e. democracy, national sovereignty), it has voted to secede from an enabler of Palestinian terror and hate education. And if that accusation sounds harsh, consider what transpired in the EU Parliament on the very day of the Brexit referendum.

While the British were voting, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was addressing the EU Parliament in Brussels. By any objective standard, the visit didn’t start off well: Upon arriving, Abbas immediately rejected a personal plea by the parliament’s president, Martin Schulz, to meet with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, who happened to be in Brussels at the same time. But things quickly got worse when Abbas started speaking.

Abbas’s speeches are always full of anti-Israel slander, and this one was no exception. 

- He accused Israel of “massacring” Palestinians’ “history, heritage, identity and geopolitical entity.” 

- He termed the Israeli “occupation” the longest in history and deemed it uniquely evil, “unlike anything that has happened to any other people anywhere in the world,” to quote one reporter’s live tweeting of the speech (I haven’t managed to find a transcript); in reality, of course, not only have there been many longer occupations, but few conflicts have ever entailed so little bloodshed. 

- He accused Israel of being “fascist” and “racist,” of committing extrajudicial killings, and of turning “our country into an open-air prison.” All this is pretty standard, as was the conclusion, in which he paid lip service to his willingness to make peace with the monstrously evil country he just described.

But even by Abbas’s standards, this speech was exceptionally vile in two respects. 

- First, he accused Israel of responsibility for all terrorism worldwide, ludicrously asserting that “Once the occupation ends, terrorism will disappear, there will be no more terrorism in the Middle East, or anywhere else in the world.” After all, Israel is clearly the reason why Muslims are killing fellow Muslims by bombing mosques, schools, and hospitals in Muslim countries like Syria, Iraq, and Pakistan, right?

- Then, he resurrected a medieval blood libel, accusing Israel of poisoning Palestinian wells. Granted, he was speaking in Arabic, and this accusation wasn’t in his prepared English translation; but the simultaneous translator rendered it into English, and Israeli reporters had no trouble hearing it; thus one has to assume it was audible to EU parliamentarians, as well.

So how did those parliamentarians respond? By giving him a standing ovation. In other words, they told him that hurling blood libels at Israel and refusing to meet with its president and would not be penalized, but rewarded.

This, of course, is not particularly surprising, the PA has been promulgating hatred of Israel through its schools and media for over 20 years now, and throughout this time, the EU and its member states have been the PA’s largest donors; thus the EU has been directly subsidizing Palestinian hate education for over two decades. The EU and its member states are also the main financiers of anti-Israel NGOs, so in that way, too, they’ve been funding anti-Israel propaganda for decades. 

And it’s no accident that the EU has devoted so much money to this purpose; it’s obsessed with Israel to the virtual exclusion of other foreign policy concerns, as evidenced by a 2010 study of what EU foreign ministers spend their time discussing. That study found the ministers had held exactly one meeting on China, a rising power, over the previous four years – but they discussed “the Middle East peace process” 12 separate times in 2009 and the first part of 2010 alone.

After Abbas refused to meet with him, Rivlin naively said he found this refusal “surprising.” But it’s not surprising at all when Abbas can be rewarded for it with a standing ovation from the very body whose president personally requested him to hold the meeting. Just as it’s not surprising that Abbas similarly rejected a personal request by France’s then-foreign minister Laurent Fabius to meet with Benjamin Netanyahu in Paris in October 2015. Why should he agree when Fabius promptly rewarded his refusal by announcing plans to convene an international conference to force Israel to accede to Palestinian demands and pledged that France would unilaterally recognize Palestine as a state if Israel declined to capitulate? Nor is it surprising that the PA continues to spew anti-Israel hatred, given that doing so earns it lavish EU funding and standing ovations from the EU parliament.

By granting financial and diplomatic rewards to Palestinian rejectionism and hate education, the EU has encouraged Palestinian terror and distanced peace. No self-respecting country should want to be associated with such sorry behavior. Britain is well out of it.

Europe should label terrorists, not tomatoes!

David Suissa Nov. 14, 2015 

On Nov. 11, while Islamic terrorists were preparing for their Friday night massacre in Paris, which would leave 132 people dead and 352 injured, one of the big news items was the European initiative to put special labels on Israeli goods made in disputed Israeli-occupied territory.

As the European Commission explained, this was not new legislation, but a clarification of existing legislation dating back to 2012. In other words, the European obsession with singling out Israel for special punishment didn’t just start last week. It’s been an ongoing affair.

So, while Islamic terrorists have been scheming to terrorize the European continent, bigwigs in Europe have been laboring over how to “protect” European consumers from Israeli olive oil, vegetables, honey, eggs, wine and other goods produced in the West Bank.

Well, that ought to keep Europeans safe!

As much as I’m disgusted by the sight of religious fanatics rampaging through Paris murdering people who just want to enjoy life, these murderers are simply doing what they believe their prophet or God wants them to do. It may violate every standard of decency, but that’s what fanatics do.

Author and Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali calls this group of Muslim fundamentalists “Medina Muslims,” in that they see the forcible imposition of sharia as their religious duty, following the example of the Prophet Mohammed when he was based in Medina. As she wrote recently in Foreign Policy, this group argues for “an Islam largely or completely unchanged from its original seventh-century version and take it as a requirement of their faith that they impose it on everyone else.”

Now, you can be repulsed by this religious ideology, but you can’t tell me it’s not a religious ideology. You can’t tell me that the fanatics of ISIS and other radical Islamic groups are fighting for jobs or better immigration laws.

The one European leader who seems to get this is British Prime Minister David Cameron, who said in an address last July: “What we are fighting, in Islamic extremism, is an ideology. It is an extreme doctrine. And like any extreme doctrine, it is subversive. At its furthest end it seeks to destroy nation-states to invent its own barbaric realm.”

While religious fanatics may have an ideological explanation for their barbaric acts, what’s the explanation for those self-righteous European bureaucrats who spend so much of their time singling out and maligning Israel?

Now that they’ve witnessed the barbarians crashing the gates of the City of Lights, will their priorities finally return to sanity? Or will they continue to obsess over Israel and treat the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the mother of all global conflicts -- as if its resolution could somehow stop the rampant Islamic violence now threatening Europe and other parts of the world?

I wonder if those European honchos ever ask themselves what kind of message they’re sending to terrorists when they labor so publicly over the labeling of Israeli vegetables. That they mean business in their fight against terror?

Here’s my suggestion for all European leaders who really do mean business in this new war: Stop your obsession with Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And stop thinking that beating up Israel will somehow gain you sympathy with Islamic terrorists. It won’t.

Yes, Israel needs to resolve its conflict with the Palestinians – for its own sake. The majority of Israelis would love nothing better than to get a divorce from the Palestinians. They’ve seen how the word “occupation” has become a big, sharp blade that enemies conveniently use to bludgeon the Jewish state. At the same time, they worry that if Israel leaves the West Bank, that blade would only get bigger and sharper as groups like ISIS and Hamas take over. For now, Israel is stuck, and its enemies know it.

In any event, regardless of the stalemate with the Palestinians, Israel should be the least of Europe’s concerns. For one thing, you don’t hear reports of Israeli terrorists trying to enter Europe to wreak havoc on European cities. Israeli tourists flocking in? Definitely.

If anything, European leaders should be actively enlisting Israel’s help to fight this rising scourge of terror that now threatens their populations. God knows the Jewish state has enough expertise in this area.

But first, Europe will need a lesson in the priorities of labeling. Label the terrorists, yes. Label their ideology, yes. Label the allies who can help you fight them, yes.

Just stop labeling Israeli tomatoes.

---

The Frenetic Fabrication of False Facts

The Guardian, Independent, and Telegraph in the UK have all frentically fabricated a story, which has been framed as an attempt by Israeli authorities to kick hundreds of Palestinians off ‘their land’ in this “Palestinian village”.

The claim that the area is “Palestinian” and owned by local “villagers” is – according to courts who examined claims by the petitioners (the Nawajah family) – fictitious.

Based on historical and geographical accounts, aerial photography, mandatory-era maps, travelogues, and the population registry, Israeli courts (HC 7530/01, 430/12, 1556/12, 1420/14) established that no such Palestinian village ever existed. According to the NGO Regavim and the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), only a handful of families resided there since the 1980s, and it only ever served as temporary (seasonal) grazing land by Palestinian shepherds.

Further, claims by the Nawajah family that they owned the land was also disproven, and the court found that the family owned a permanent residence in Yatta, in Palestinian-controlled Area A.

Additionally, the 20 illegal structures in the encampment built adjacent to an ancient Jewish archeological site represents part of a broader attempt by the EU, the PA, and pro-Palestinian NGOs to establish ‘facts on the ground’ in Area C.

Jack Wallis Simons wrote this in his fascinating Daily Mail expose earlier in the year:

More than 400 EU-funded Palestinian homes have been erected in Area C of the West Bank, which was placed under Israeli jurisdiction during the Oslo Accords – a part of international law to which the EU is a signatory.

The Palestinian buildings, which have no permits, come at a cost of tens of millions of Euros in public money, a proportion of which comes from the British taxpayer.

This has raised concerns that the EU is using valuable resources to take sides in a foreign territorial dispute.

Finally, the charge that, if the Palestinian petitioners lose the case, they will be rendered homeless is also not true, according to the MFA:

[They] have been offered plots of similar, or even better, quality in a nearby area that already conforms to planning and zoning laws. Building houses there will also improve the petitioners’ quality of life, giving them access to infrastructure and educational facilities that are not available in their current illegal locations. Additionally, they will be allowed to continue the same agricultural activities on the lands they currently claim.

Susya is neither “Palestinian” nor a “village.” It can more accurately be described – to use the parlance of foreign journalists when reporting on Jews in similar situations in the West Bank – as an illegal Palestinian settlement.

See original article at http://tinyurl.com/ov4zgu6  

The folly of the international community on the Palestinians

Pushing both sides into a forced settlement will lead to disaster, and a Hamas takeover in the West Bank;

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4657738,00.html 

Dror Ben Yemini:  05.15.15,

The formula is a familiar one: The more right-wing the government of Israel appears to the world, the easier it is for the anti-Israel campaigners to do their work. An increase in Israel in statements and incidents of an anti-Arab nature leads to a fall-off in support for Israel among Jewish students on US campuses, and the more organizations like Breaking the Silence and B'Tselem create the distorted impression that Israel is committing crimes on an ongoing basis, the easier it is for the BDS activists to tout their case.

The starting positions are problematic – not only due to the composition of the new Israeli government, but primarily in light of the geopolitical situation. The absurd thing is that under current circumstances, Israel's control over the territories is the lesser evil.

A hasty political settlement – to which the US administration and EU are leading, with the encouragement of a bunch of Israelis who support the Palestinian demand for unilateral recognition of statehood – would be a disaster for the Palestinians. A Hamas takeover would only be a matter of time.

This has nothing at all to do with the composition of the government. Isaac Herzog would encounter the same geopolitical situation; and Tzipi Livni, too, would encounter Palestinian opposition to any peace deal. After all, the Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert governments made very generous offers to Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas respectively – to no avail.

Nevertheless, all is not lost. Assuming that Israeli control over the West Bank is not going to end anytime soon, a right-wing government can still promote a series of measures that would better the lives of the Palestinians but would not undermine Israeli security in the slightest – in the field of water infrastructure, for example. Funds have been donated for rehabilitation projects; a start can be made.

And the same goes for projects in the fields of health, construction and infrastructure. Israel hasn't been the one to delay development. On the contrary, since the beginning of Israel's control over the West Bank and Gaza, there have been huge improvements in most areas.

In 1967, for example, just four Palestinian communities were hooked up to running water for domestic use; by 2004, however, 643 of the 708 communities were on the water grid. But there is still much to improve. It's not only a Palestinian interest, but an Israeli interest too.

There's something foolish about the fact that the international community is pushing the sides into a political settlement that will only make things worse for the Palestinians. But there are some things that can be done even without a peace agreement. Whether or not improving the situation is in the Palestinians' interests remains unclear. An improvement is clearly in Israel's interests.