West Bank, the EU “appalled” by illegal actions of Israeli settlers—but is unable to act

Brussels – It is not only the Gaza Strip to be in Tel Aviv’s crosshairs. The violence of Israeli settlers in the West Bank—which, together with the coastal exclave, is supposed to constitute the future State of Palestine—continues to multiply, even extending to the Israeli military and, in the last few weeks, even to structures financed with European funds. But from the EU come only rhetorical and cloying condemnations that are not followed by any concrete measures. 

It took two weeks for a meagre comment condemning the Jewish State for the demolition of a school still under construction, financed with EU funds and the French Development Agency (AFD) in the village of Al-Aqaba in the northern West Bank, to leak out from Brussels. 

The statement that appeared today (19 August) on the website of the European External Action Service (EEAS), the Union’s Foreign Office headed by High Representative Kaja Kallas, is not even signed but attributed to the Spokesperson’s Service. “The EU is appalled by the demolition,” reads the four-line communiqué, where it is reminded that “education is a fundamental right” of Palestinians.

Paris also “strongly condemns” the destruction of the school, and calls on the Tel Aviv authorities to “account” for their actions. “The continuation of (Israel’s) settlement policy in the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, ed) constitutes a grave violation of international law and threatens the prospect of the two-state solution,” reads the website of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The structure, the demolition of which actually began on 5 August with the decisive support of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), was supposed to house a hundred or so children from local communities. Brussels “expects its investments in support of the Palestinian people to be protected from harm and destruction by Israel, in accordance with international law,” the EEAS note concludes.

Not one more word against the criminal actions carried out by settlers in the West Bank, defended and often supported by the IDF when they perpetrate all kinds of abuse against Palestinians in the region: from intimidation to theft, assaulting houses and structures of various kinds and, in the worst cases, going so far as to commit killings and lynchings. A recent case was that of a group of extremist settlers who even attacked the Israeli military, guilty of not helping them in attacking Palestinian inhabitants. 

The Al-Aqaba school episode is not isolated. Last November, a similar fate befell the Al-Bustan association centre, the centre of gravity of another AFD-backed development project in occupied East Jerusalem.

Even from facts such as these, it is clear how little regard Israeli settlers and authorities have not only for the fundamental rights of Palestinians—systematically violated throughout the occupied territories, as reported, among others, by Oscar-winning director Basel Adra—but also for their own image in the eyes of Tel Aviv’s international partners. 

However, it still does not seem to be enough to convince the Twenty-Seven to proceed with harsher sanctions against the Jewish state, such as the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, a prospect that has been discussed for months but will most likely never get the green light. Suffice it to say that the chancelleries  haven’t even succeeded in agreeing on the partial unfreezing of Horizon+ funds for Tel Aviv, a move that would take effect from 2028 and involve a sum in the order of a few hundred million euros.

Moreover, the blanket demolitions and expansion of illegal colonies make it essentially impossible for any progress towards the construction of a Palestinian state, which is supposed to be established between the Strip and the West Bank. Its formal recognition has been announced in recent weeks by an increasing number of countries, including two G7 members, France and the United Kingdom. 

However, any idea of Palestinian statehood is strongly opposed by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who has an arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court—and several members of his government such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who pulled out of the drawer the controversial “E1 Plan” to extend settlements in the West Bank, effectively cutting it in two with the aim of “definitely burying the idea of a Palestinian state.” The Knesset, Israel’s single-chamber parliament, passed a non-binding resolution on the annexation of the West Bank months ago, shortly before the executive approved the plan for the total (re)occupation of the Strip. 

Meanwhile, in the coastal exclave, the Gazawi continue to be artificially slaughtered and starved (with all due respect to the “humanitarian agreements” signed by Tel Aviv with Brussels), as a direct consequence of what the Israeli NGOs themselves brand as the genocide of the Palestinian people. Netanyahu is pressing ahead, heedless of both the growing internal opposition and external pressure to grant a humanitarian truce to civilians in Gaza and reach a ceasefire with Hamas.