Former EU diplomats call on EU to act against Israeli settlement project E1

The European Union and its Member States must “act” in the face of a vast and criticized Israeli colonization project in the occupied West Bank, some 500 former diplomats, ministers and European officials asked in a forum on Monday. Among them are the former French Prime Ministers and Foreign Ministers Dominique de Villepin and Alain Juppé, the former Italian Prime Ministers, Massimo D'Alema, Belgian, Yves Leterme, and Swedish, Stefan Löfven, as well as two former Presidents of the European Parliament, Josep Borrell and Enrique Baron Crespo.

The Israeli government must soon award “contracts for the first tranche of the illegal E1 colonization project”, recall the diplomats in this column published in the French daily Libération. This project provides for the construction of more than 1,200 housing units near Jerusalem.

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This plan, approved by Israel last year after several decades of freezing, notably under pressure from successive American administrations, would further isolate East Jerusalem, occupied and then annexed by Israel, from the rest of the West Bank, further endangering the possibility of a future Palestinian state. On September 27, Israeli justice ordered the opening of the call for tenders for the project to be postponed by one month, so that the subject does not disrupt the legislative elections scheduled for the end of October.

“Dissuading the realization of the E1 project”

“Despite the considerable consequences of this new annexation of land, the European Union has not taken any measures to dissuade the realization of the E1 project nor, more generally, has respected its obligations, arising from the European treaties, to act in the face of violations of international law”, denounce the signatories.

They welcome “the fact that some EU member states have taken national measures against illegal settlements”, but denounce the positions of other states “notably Germany and Italy” which “continue systematically to block the adoption of measures at European level, thus becoming de facto complicit in the weakening of EU values ​​and the two-state solution”.

They call on the European Commission to “immediately present legislative proposals” to “sanction all financial institutions and other service providers involved in the implementation of the E1 project and other illegal settlements” and to “prevent all EU trade with illegal settlements”. They also call on the EU to “implement the proposals” to “suspend the trade provisions of the EU-Israel Association Agreement”.

These measures must be taken “during the next meeting of EU foreign ministers, on October 12,” the diplomats further urge. Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967. Colonization there has continued since then, but has exploded in recent years. More than 500,000 Israelis live in settlements in the occupied West Bank, alongside some three million Palestinians.