Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: EU

Showing posts with label EU. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 04, 2023

European Union think tank seems think the Abraham Accords are a mistake

The European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) is the Union’s Agency analysing foreign, security and defence policy issues. Its core mission is to assist the EU and its member states in the implementation of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), including the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) as well as other external action of the Union.

One would think that the EUISS' analyses would be in line with mainstream EU thinking.

Last year, Algeria hosted a forgettable Arab League summit. The EUISS used this as a springboard to evaluate how well and how poorly the League of Arab States (LAS) does what it was meant to do - avoid intra-Arab wars, for example.

But one of its threads of analysis was quite concerning:

The LAS has lost credibility in recent decades due to the weakness of its institutional mechanisms,and its failure to translate the lofty statements of its leaders into action. The inability to take a united stance on the Palestinian issue, when several Arab leaders decided to normalise relations with Israel, is probably its most profound failure, especially given that an overwhelming majority of 88% of Arab citizens disapprove of their governments’ recognition of Israel, and only 6% accept a formal diplomatic recognition.

It sure sounds like the EUISS is saying that a unified Arab consensus against even recognizing Israel is far preferable to a situation where some Arab nations establish relations.

An official EU organization that apparently considers several Arab states making peace with Israel to be a "profound failure" seems to be a pretty big deal. Does this mean the EU considers earlier peace between Israel and Jordan and Egypt to have been a net negative as well?

In fact, the EUISS site does not have any analysis of the Abraham Accords at all. Even though these agreements have been perhaps the most far-reaching change in the Middle East since the Iranian revolution, they do not merit a single article.

The longstanding EU position is that the Palestinian issue is the center of any Middle East peace (the "linkage" claim) and the Abraham Accords showed that this assumption has never been true, and indeed the Arab League was the impediment to peace by pretending that its members were obligated to act as a single anti-Israel bloc instead of in their own self-interests.

In 2020, the EASS - the diplomatic service of the EU - officially welcomed the normalization agreements without using the name "Abraham Accords," but then spent more time discussing how a two state solution should be the main goal and blamed only Israel for the lack of progress on that front. Whether it is stated formally or not, the EU position seems to be that Israel has no rights or legitimate claims to the Old City, Area C or any historic Jewish sites outside the Green Line. It appears that the EU regards the Abraham Accords as a net negative because they reduced diplomatic pressure on Israel on ceding its claims and they took the focus away from the "Palestinians are virtuous, Israel is intransigent" mantra that has been its foreign policy towards the conflict since the Palestinian refusal for peace and the second intifada.

(h/t Irene)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Friday memes and cartoons

The second and third ones really, really upset the Israel haters on Twitter.

The fourth was one of the most popular memes I ever posted on Instagram.

By the way, this is Byzantine-era. Jews continued to build towns after 70 CE. There are lots of Talmudic-era synagogues discovered in the Galilee, Judea and Samaria.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

When the Mufti planned to build settlements on the West Bank

From The New York Times, September 17, 1951:

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Sept. 16— Haj Amin el Husseini, the exiled Mufti of Jerusalem, and his Arab Higher Committee have started. a move to create a solid belt of Palestine Arab settlements around Israel and prevent-the moving of refugees away from Israel borders.

This change of front has come with the present evident collapse of the. former insistence by the Arab League, the Arab Higher Committee -and the Arab governments on the return of Palestine Arab refugees to their original homes under the terms of a 1948 United Nations resolution.,

The Arab Higher Committee was the last to demand that the refugees must return to the territory now under Israeli control. This demand not only has been abandoned. for practical, as opposed to political, purposes but the Arab Higher Committee and certain Arab statesmen now are opposed to. any return of Palestine Arabs to Israel territory. This change has been brought about by the fact that Israel will accept only a few Arabs into their old home, and that it is better to avoid the impression that the Palestine case has been settled. by agreement for a few to return.

...Strongly nationalist elements apparently are rallying around the Mufti and the Arab Higher Committee’s program for a belt of thickly settled Palestinians surrounding Israel.

...‘The shift in. the Mufti’s policy was apparently connected with the enthusiasm which Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria displayed for the preservation of the independent Kingdom of Jordan, and their strong opposition to its unification with Iraq. The Palestinian element is becoming increasingly predominant in Jordan in which it constitutes not only some two-thirds of the. population but is an educated and trained element that is pushing the original Jordanians, largely of Bedouin stock, into the background.

At the time, UNRWA was actually trying to solve the problem: it was pushing hard for Palestinian Arabs to be resettled in areas of Syria and Lebanon where they would be given plots of land and could become financially independent. And Israel had agreed to allow tens of thousands of Arabs to return but only in conjunction with the Arab world naturalizing the rest.

But the Mufti did not care about what was best for the Palestinian Arabs. He wanted to destroy Israel. If he couldn't flood Israel with hundreds of thousands of refugees, he intended to turn Jordan into a temporary Palestinian state whose only purpose would be to destroy Israel - and that included building settlements surrounding Israel where they could be used as a means to attack Israel from a short distance.

While his entire plan was not realized, during the 1950s and 1960s Israel suffered numerous terror attacks from Palestinian "fedayeen" who lived in nearby communities in Syria, Jordan and Gaza.

The Mufti's plan still lives, though. The PA, with the EU, are building their own settlements non-stop in Area C specifically to block Israel from controlling the land it is supposed to control in the Oslo Accords. Hundreds of illegal structures and ramshackle communities have been built, and Palestinians moved in from Areas A and B, daring Israel to tear them down in front of the cameras.

It is an updated version of the Mufti's plan for settlements being built in Judea and Samaria not to benefit Palestinian Arabs but to hurt Israel.

(h/t Charles)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Palestinians demand EU pressure Israel to cede Jerusalem. As they always do.

Ma'an reports:

Prime minister Muhammad Shtayyeh called on Germany to put pressure on Israel to abide by its agreements, to fulfill our right to hold elections in all Palestinian territories, including Jerusalem, and to stop all measures and violations by the occupation and its settlers.

This came during his meeting with the President of the German Federal Council (Bundesrat) Peter Tschentscher, today, Thursday, in Ramallah, in the presence of the Head of the Mission of the Federal Republic of Germany to the State of Palestine, Ambassador Oliver Ovcha.

The "elections" demand is interesting, because there are no elections scheduled nor is there any prospect for elections in the future. The last scheduled elections were "postponed" indefinitely because polls showed that Fatah would lose, so Abbas blamed Israel - for not allowing voting in Jerusalem.

The only reason that the Palestinian Authority officials talk to the EU about elections is because they want to use that issue to gain control over "east Jerusalem."

Up until now, Israel allowed Jerusalem Arabs to use ballot boxes in Jerusalem post offices. The boxes then get transported to PA-controlled areas where they are unsealed and votes counted. This way, from Israel's perspective, they are absentee ballots being "mailed" in, and from the PA perspective the ballots are being cast in Jerusalem. It is a convenient fiction for both sides.

But the PA then started insisting that Israel allow campaigning in Jerusalem, which they won't do. So they have been requesting the EU pressure Israel to give in to their demands - which are congruent with official EU policy that Israel has no rights to any part of Jerusalem across the Green Line.

It isn't like the Palestinians care about Jerusalem in itself. Before 1967, under Arab rule, it was all but ignored by Jordan and by Palestinians. The 1964 PLO Charter didn't mention Jerusalem once. Neither did the 1968 version, which is the current version.

But they are keenly interested in taking Jerusalem away from Jews.

When the UN proposed that Jerusalem be an international city, as far as I can tell, there was no outcry from the Palestinian Arabs then against that idea, claiming it was theirs or that it was purely Muslim. All those narrative are said only in the context of taking it away from Israel.

That is their only goal. That is why insisting that Jerusalem be their capital is positioned as non-negotiatible - there is no logical, historic or legal reason Judaism's holiest city must be their capital for them to have a state. There are 193 other nations that manage to survive without their capitals being in Jerusalem.

But taking Jerusalem away from Jews would, they know, be the beginning of the end of Israel. It would be cutting the heart out of the Jewish people.

That is the overriding goal. And it always has been.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Israel to increase funds for monitoring illegal Arab Area C construction

From Haaretz:

The Israeli ministry that oversees settlements intends to double the budget allocated to settlers for drones and inspectors to monitor Palestinian construction. The National Missions Ministry intends to allocate a total of 40 million shekels ($11.1 million) for this purpose.

In 2020 the National Missions Ministry – then the Settlement Ministry, and headed by Likud lawmaker Tzachi Hanegbi – announced for the first time that it would allocate 20 million shekels ($5.5 million) to these departments, to be disbursed among the settlements. The funds were eventually transferred much later, under the Bennett-Lapid government.

Under the leadership of National Missions Minister Orit Strock, that budget is projected to double. A recently published call for tenders stresses that the budget will only be allocated after the state budget is approved.

Good!

There are lots of Western NGOs who put everything Israel does in Area C under a microscope - while they ignore, or encourage, Arabs to build in the same area.

The EU even puts its own name and logos on these illegal settlements, built nowhere near any infrastructure, positioned specifically to stop Jews from building - or to stop the IDF from being able to use existing military zones.

In 2016, I created this animation of satellite images showing a bunch of illegal structures being built. I've gone on tours and seen these structures up close - often with EU logos.

Masafer Yatta, which is a favorite topic among the anti-Israel woke, is likewise a new community built in Area C - not an ancient Palestinian village being threatened.

It is hard to describe how prevalent this illegal building is without seeing it yourself. So this modest increase of funding to help document the many, many illegal Palestinian structures is a welcome development.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

The EU is allergic to the historical word "Samaria"

The European Union issued a press release:

Today’s decision in the Knesset to repeal some articles of the 2005 Disengagement law concerning the Northern West Bank is counter-productive to de-escalation efforts, and hampers the possibility to pursue confidence building measures and create a political horizon for dialogue.

Israel has reaffirmed its commitment to efforts to reduce tensions just very recently, with the joint communiques of Aqaba (26 February) and Sharm al-Sheikh (19 March).

The EU considers settlements as illegal under international law. They constitute a major obstacle to peace and threaten the viability of the two-state solution. The Gaza Disengagement law of 2005, and its articles concerning Northern West Bank, was an important step towards a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The decision of the Knesset is a clear step back.

We call on Israel to revoke this law and take actions that contribute to de-escalation of an already very tense situation.

The term "West Bank" wasn't capitalized until the 1970s, thousands of years after the area was named Judea and Samaria.

Now the EU has publicized a brand new place name: "Northern West Bank." I can only find one other place where it is capitalized as a place name - by the obsessively anti-Israel World Council of Churches.

But the EU is pretending that there is an Israeli law that specifies the "Northern West Bank." No, there isn't.

The Disengagement Plan that resulted in Israeli withdrawal from Gaza also included the depopulation of several Jewish towns in Samaria - which is referred to repeatedly in the Plan as "Northern Samaria."

The EU would rather adopt a new place name, Northern West Bank, than use what the area is actually called. And the only reason is to separate that area from its Biblical and Jewish roots.

That is not objectivity. That is propaganda to pre-judge the outcome of negotiations.

(h/t Irene)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

The lies of the "Arab Group for the Protection of Nature"

Last week I noted the absurd claim by the Arab Group for the Protection of Nature that Israel has destroyed 3 million trees between 2000-2012.

It turns out that this group, founded in 2003, just started a major anti-Israel campaign - probably to attract lots of money from the EU which loves funding any anti-Israel organization.

They published a series of infographics to push a lot of lies.

The entire series is based on the lie that today's Palestinian Arabs are related to the Canaanites, so they discuss the thousands of years of history of the olive tree in the region, pretending that this has something to do with modern Palestinians.

Of course, the Jews in the kingdoms of Judah and Israel also cultivated olive way before anyone ever heard of Palestinians. Olives are a major theme in the Hebrew scriptures. Ancient olive presses built by Jews can be found throughout the Land of Israel.

They don't want to mention that!

This is not true. The agricultural sector as a whole (including cereals) is less than 5% of the Palestinian GDP, and olives are about 25% of that (Oxfam), so the olive sector is about 1% of the Palestinian economy. That is a far cry from 14%.

In fact, Palestinians spend far more on paying terrorists and their families than they earn from profits of olive trees.

It is true that the Jaffa orange was not a Zionist invention. But the Zionists are the ones to turn it into a major export.

In 1939, the majority of orange exports from Palestine came from Jews, not Arabs! The Jewish sector outgrew the Arab sector starting in 1933. And the exports were always mostly from the Jewish orange growers, as these articles from 1922 and 1935 show.

Most of the forests planted by the JNF were pine forests, and pine forests have been in the region for thousands of years.

And guess who decimated those forests? The Arabs who lived there!

1881 Survey of Western Palestine:

From Underground Jerusalem: An Account of Some of the Principal Difficulties Encountered in Its Exploration and the Results Obtained. With a Narrative of an Expedition Through the Jordan Valley and a Visit to the Samaritans, by Sir Charles Warren, 1876:

And as for cypress trees:

The tall cypress only exists in Palestine, as cultivated by man in gardens, and in cemeteries, and other open places of towns.

Samih al-Qasim was not an ancient Palestinian poet - he died in 2014.

Psalms mention olive trees a number of times - and they were written quite a long time before any Palestinian poets talked about them.

The entire holiday of Chanukah is centered around a miracle of olive oil!

The lies just keep on coming.

Of course, this group has nothing negative to say about the current Palestinian penchant for setting fires against Israeli lands they consider to be Palestinian, or the history of their destroying Jewish crops that continues today. Their concern for nature is curiously partisan.

And make no mistake - the desire to separate Jews from the Land of Israel by pretending that they have no history there and that they have no love of the land is pure antisemitism.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!