European Union declares diplomatic war on Israel

[Published 6 April 2017]


Ambassadors to Israel representing 28 European Union States (EU) behaved most undiplomatically in ambushing the recently appointed Director of Israel’s Foreign Ministry and former Ambassador to Australia - Yuval Rotem - at a meet and greet function Rotem had organised at the Dan Hotel in Tel Aviv last week.

Instead of the pleasant banter over drinks and canapes usually associated with such events on the diplomatic cocktail circuit - the function erupted into an explosive EU protest against Israel’s plans to evict Arab squatters from 42 structures that had been illegally erected between Ma’ale Adumim and Jerusalem at the strategically narrowest point in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) known as E1.

Lars Faarburg-Andersen - the EU Ambassador to Israel — took the opportunity to read out to Rotem the following one-page document which had been approved by the EU political-security committee - in which all 28 member states are represented.

This gauche and uncivilised behaviour was certainly uncalled for and not conduct that one would ever expect to come from refined and cultured Europeans.

Reading this carefully-crafted statement at the function was a cavalier action aggravating the already strained relationship between the EU and Israel following the EU’s introduction on 11 November 2015 of labelling requirements for goods produced in Judea and Samaria entering Europe.

The statement revealingly exposes the hypocrisy of the EU for the following reasons:

It was presented as a “demarche” — a diplomatic or official initiative — a protest normally delivered through diplomatic channels — not at a cocktail function.

The statement confirms EU members were involved — without Israel’s approval - in the funding of these particular illegal structures located in Area C of Judea and Samaria — where Israel has sole administrative and security control under the 1993 Oslo Accords.

This is not the first occasion the EU has sought to impose itself in Area C by supporting illegal Arab building activities where it has no legal right to be present or involved.

On 13 December 2016 the EU Representative and the EU Heads of Mission in Jerusalem and Ramallah issued a statement acknowledging that humanitarian structures provided by the EU and EU Member States in 2016 worth approximately EUR 536,000 had been either destroyed or confiscated.

The EU then claimed that its activities were humanitarian and carried out in full accordance with International Humanitarian Law - with the “sole aim” of providing humanitarian support to the most vulnerable population.

Yet this pious claim has exploded in its face with its own admission in the demarche that:

“The EU and EU member States are united in the view that Area C is of critical importance for the viability of a future Palestinian State”

What the EU has really been doing under the guise of humanitarian aid is financing illegal Arab structures designed to create irreversible facts on the ground favouring the claims of the Palestine Liberation Organisation over the national and security interests of Israel. The EU has been outed engaging in such reprehensible actions tainted by illegality outside diplomatic norms.

Israel’s response to this unprecedented ambush and illegal misconduct has been remarkably restrained.

Avivit Bar-Ilan director of the Israel Foreign Ministry’s European Union Department has told EU Deputy Ambassador to Israel Mark Gallagher:

“In Israel, illegal construction is dealt with according to the law.”

Bar-Ilan wryly observed:

“There are 32 humanitarian crises around the world, but the European Union opts to deal disproportionately only with what happens in Area C, which undoubtedly isn’t in a humanitarian crisis,”

The 28 Ambassadors — carrying their demarche between their tails - should be sent packing to Europe for a period of reflection and introspection.

Palestine - Peres Trashes Rabin's Oslo Accords Vision

[Published 28 October 2015]


Former Israeli President Shimon Peres has pre-empted the memorial rally this Saturday evening to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the assassination on 4 November 1995 of Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin - by writing – quite misleadingly - of Rabin’s vision in the Jerusalem Post this week.

Former US president Bill Clinton, Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin and Yitzchak Rabin’s daughter - former deputy defence minister Dalia Rabin - are scheduled to participate in the rally – and hopefully will set the record straight.

Peres claimed that Rabin’s Government – in which Peres was Foreign Minister

“sought peace at the price of a historic compromise: two states for two peoples. For, if there shall not be two countries, there shall be one continues [sic] tragedy for both peoples.”

Rabin never offered any such two-state compromise.

Peres repeated this disingenuous message again in the same article:

“We laid down the foundations for a two-state solution and began building our peace with Jordan.”

Rabin made his vision very clear in his last speech to the Knesset on 5 October 1995 when presenting the 300 page “Israeli - Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip” (Oslo Accords) for approval:

“Members of Knesset,

We are striving for a permanent solution to the unending bloody conflict between us and the Palestinians and the Arab states.

In the framework of the permanent solution, we aspire to reach, first and foremost, the State of Israel as a Jewish state, at least 80% of whose citizens will be, and are, Jews.

At the same time, we also promise that the non-Jewish citizens of Israel — Muslim, Christian, Druze and others — will enjoy full personal, religious and civil rights, like those of any Israeli citizen. Judaism and racism are diametrically opposed.

We view the permanent solution in the framework of State of Israel which will include most of the area of the Land of Israel as it was under the rule of the British Mandate, and alongside it a Palestinian entity which will be a home to most of the Palestinian residents living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

We would like this to be an entity which is less than a state, and which will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority. The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines.

And these are the main changes, not all of them, which we envision and want in the permanent solution:

A. First and foremost, united Jerusalem, which will include both Ma’ale Adumim and Givat Ze’ev — as the capital of Israel, under Israeli sovereignty, while preserving the rights of the members of the other faiths, Christianity and Islam, to freedom of access and freedom of worship in their holy places, according to the customs of their faiths.

B. The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term.

C. Changes which will include the addition of Gush Etzion, Efrat, Beitar and other communities, most of which are in the area east of what was the “Green Line,” prior to the Six Day War.

D. The establishment of blocs of settlements in Judea and Samaria, like the one in Gush Katif.”

The two-state solution was never entertained by Rabin.

Two separate countries - favoured by Peres - is irretrievably dead and buried. Rabin’s legacy should not be coupled with that failed diplomatic initiative.

Rabin’s vision should be faithfully preserved – not trashed.

Palestine - Israel Has Had Enough

[Published 10 May 2012]


The Palestinian Authority’s decision to unilaterally seek Palestinian statehood at the United Nations and UNESCO - in breach of its obligations under the Oslo Accords and the Roadmap - has propelled Benjamin Netanyahu and Shaul Mofaz into forming Israel’s government of national unity this week.

This was made abundantly clear when one of the four priorities announced by both leaders was:

“to move forward responsibly in the peace process”

With the new Government now controlling 78% of the votes in the Knesset - a new offer is set to be made by Israel to the Palestinian Authority in a final endeavour to resolve the allocation of sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza between Jews and Arabs.

Israel has endured the machinations of the Palestinian Authority for the last 19 years. Its continuing obduracy in demanding - as a minimum - a Palestinian State equal in size to 100% of the West Bank and Gaza - with its capitol in Jerusalem - has been a major stumbling block in ending the conflict.

Successive Israeli Prime Ministers of differing political persuasions have laboured in vain to try and achieve an equitable division of these territories between Israel and the Palestinian Authority within the context of a negotiated peace treaty.

Refusing to budge from 100% is hardly a basis on which anyone can ever hope to successfully negotiate.

The Palestinian Authority will now pay dearly for its mistake in breaking away from the Oslo Accords and the Roadmap to unilaterally seek recognition of statehood at the United Nations and UNESCO in September and October 2011.

These disastrous diplomatic forays were made outside - and in breach of - the negotiating framework established by the Oslo Accords and the Bush Roadmap - which provided in Clause XXXI (7) of the 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and Gaza Strip:

“Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations.”

President Obama’s attempt to counsel the Palestinian Authority against taking such action was made very clear when addressing world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly:

“Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the U.N. If it were that easy, it would have been accomplished by now.”

Notwithstanding the threat by America to veto any such move for statehood - the application was pressed - only to find it ignominiously rejected before it was even voted on by the Security Council.

Undeterred - the Palestinian Authority then sought international recognition of Palestinian statehood at UNESCO - where it succeeded - despite Israel and America’s strong opposition.

America immediately suspended the payment of its membership dues to UNESCO under a domestic 1994 law on America's statute books - which prohibited payments to:

“any affiliated organization of the United Nations which grants full membership as a state to any organization or group that does not have the internationally recognized attributes of statehood.”

Palestine’s application did not comply with the internationally recognized attributes of statehood laid down in the Montevideo Convention 1933 - yet UNESCO had recognized Palestinian statehood in breach of such well established international law.

None of the 194 member states of UNESCO - including Israel and America - has taken any steps since to try and reverse UNESCO’s unlawful decision or withdraw its delegates from UNESCO in protest - even though 87 of them did not affirmatively vote for Palestine‘s admission as a member state of UNESCO.

Their inaction amounts to recognition of Palestinian statehood and an end to Palestinian homelessness - resulting in the achievement of the two state solution outside the Oslo Accords and the Roadmap.

This state of Palestine is not required to be demilitarized nor recognize Israel as the Jewish State - as Israel had been demanding as conditions for its recognition of a Palestinian State.

So where is Israel going to go from here in “moving forward responsibly in the peace process?"

A clue can be found in the following views expressed by Mofaz in November 2009 - which remain equally relevant in 2012:

“Today in Gaza, 100% of the territory and 100% of the population is under Hamas control.

In the West Bank, there are three types of areas; Area A, B, and C.

Palestinians have security and civilian responsibility in Area A.

In Area B, Israel has security responsibility, the Palestinians have civilian sovereignty.

Security and civilian issues are controlled by Israel in Area C

Today, Areas A and B represent 40% of the West Bank territory and 99.2% of the Palestinian population. But there is no continuity between the Palestinians in Areas A and B.

I am suggesting adding 20% of Area C to give full continuity to the Palestinian state, with 60% of the territory in the West Bank and 99% of the population.”

On Jerusalem - Mofaz was very definite:

“ The issue of Jerusalem should be discussed in a very sensitive way. There is no chance to divide Jerusalem. It will remain united as the capital of the state of Israel and we have to find a way to handle the daily life of the Jewish and Palestinian people in Jerusalem.

On the vexed issue of building in Jewish settlements in the West Bank during negotiations - Mofaz was clear:

“We will not freeze the life or building in Ma’ale Adumim, Gush Etzion, Efrat, Ariel and some others, all of which are known as the settlement blocs.

Regarding the areas that will be the future Palestinian state, I believe that we should consider the continuation of the life of the people, but we should not build in this area because it will be under the sovereignty and responsibility of the Palestinian state.

This makes it very clear which areas we will continue to build in and which we should allow daily life to continue but without any building.“

Mofaz’s views - if accepted by Netanyahu - will form the basis for a final offer that Israel will be making to the Palestinian Authority.

No doubt such offer will be rejected - because it would mean a substantial diminution in territory from the last offer made by Israel’s Prime Minister Olmert in 2008 - and several even more attractive offers made and rejected in 1937, 1947 and 2000.

Israel would be totally justified in this decision - since it is now facing a militarized Palestinian State that does not recognize Israel as the Jewish State.

For Israel - the refusal of such an offer would signal that it is time to annex Area C, retain security control in Area B - and let the state of Palestine exercise its new found sovereignty in Areas A, B and Gaza.

Israel’s national unity Government clearly signals that it is not in a mood to play the Palestinian Authority’s game any more