The question of punishing illegal settlements in occupied Palestinian territory was considered separately in Europe and Israel last week, with only superficial differences in the conclusions reached. Israel’s near half-century occupation is in no immediate danger, either at home or abroad.
Some 16 European foreign ministers sent a letter to the European Union’s foreign affairs chief, Federica Mogherini, calling for the EU to label clearly Israeli settlement products to alert shoppers to their true provenance.
Yair Lapid, Israel’s former finance minister who is widely regarded as a moderate, angrily phoned Mogherini to warn that major European states were calling for a “de facto boycott of Israel”. He described the letter as “a stain” on the EU, adding that Israel’s economy could face “disaster”.
EU foreign ministers were no less persuaded of the punitive nature of their proposal. Labelling settlement goods would, they wrote, be “an important step in the full implementation of EU longstanding policy” and vital to preserving the two-state solution.
In truth, however, the letter simply continues Europe’s feeble and muddle-headed policy in the face of Israel’s intensifying efforts to entrench the occupation.
After years of internal debates, only a small majority of the 27 EU states has been able to agree on the most ineffectual measure imaginable against products made on land and using resources stolen from the occupied Palestinian population.
Labelling might give conscientious consumers useful information to target settlements goods but, in the unlikely event a significant number of shoppers chose to act, it would barely dent Israel’s economy.
In fact, even if the EU went much further and agreed to enforce a fully fledged boycott of the settlements – something far from its current agenda – it would have little more than a psychological impact.
The reason is that, while on the one hand the EU ponders symbolic gestures against the settlements, on the other it actively subsidises the very state that has been expanding the settlements for almost 50 years.
It does so both through a special trade agreement that makes Europe Israel’s largest export market and by handing over large sums of aid annually to the Palestinian Authority, which maintains order in the occupied territories on Israel’s behalf.
European ministers are behaving like deluded parents who believe they can punish a wayward child by docking his pocket money while at the same time letting him buy up the toy store.
The pressing need for Europe to find its backbone was underscored last week when Israel’s supreme court considered the question of boycotts.
Israeli peace and human rights groups had petitioned Israel’s highest court, long considered a lone outpost of liberalism, over a controversial law passed four years ago. It imposes heavy damages on any Israeli individual or organisation that calls for a boycott of either Israel or the settlements.
The Israeli right’s goal in passing the legislation was undisguised: to silence internal critics of the occupation, especially those who back growing international calls for Israel to face BDS – boycott, divestment and sanctions. A similar campaign of isolation turned the tide against apartheid South Africa.
However, by a narrow majority, the court supported the law. Several judges described calls for boycott “political terror”, while another renamed the BDS movement “Bigoted, Dishonest, Shameful”.
Observers were particularly surprised that the court refused to make a distinction between boycotting Israel and the settlements. Effectively, the judges kosher-stamped the occupation, equating a non-violent political protest against the settlements with “terror”.
Lara Friedman of Americans for Peace Now observed that in doing so the court had codified Israel’s “de facto annexation” of the West Bank.
In practice, the ruling will bar Israelis from showing any solidarity with Palestinians living under oppression. As the liberal Haaretz daily noted, lobbying to stop theatre companies and musicians from performing in the large settlement of Ariel, in the heart of the West Bank, is now effectively outlawed with the court’s approval.
Uri Avnery, leader of the small Israeli peace camp Gush Shalom, which for many years has called unsuccessfully on the EU to boycott settlement products, believed the ruling proved the judges were simply “afraid” of the growing power of the right.
Without a supreme court prepared to back basic civil rights like free speech, the Israeli right’s hold is unchallenged. It is shutting down the kind of political spaces that allowed blacks and whites in South Africa to struggle jointly against apartheid.
Israeli commentator Gideon Levy lamented on Sunday: “We’re about to get our most nationalist government – and there is no one to stop its laws.”
The court’s ruling only highlighted the EU’s shameful cowardice in failing to confront Israel. It is precisely as Israeli political institutions – from Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to the judiciary – make common cause behind the settlements that Europe needs to find its voice.
The few Israelis prepared to break out of the domestic consensus and stand up for Palestinian rights to dignity and justice need all the help they can get. Not least they need the solidarity of European governments, who should be joining them in calling for harsh – not paltry – penalties against Israel.
A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.
Right on! If (as all “statesmen” know but only a few say out loud) the settlements are illegal (that is, violate the Fourth Geneva Convention), the right step is to demand Israel remove the settlers and dismantle the settlements (read UNSC 465/1980). But if such a demand were to be made again (as it has not been), it must escape from being “mere words” (as UNSC-465 was) which Israel can ignore by being backed up with enforcement sanctions. There is no other way that I can see.
Someone should really ask EU ministers [1] if they really wish to see justice and 2SS, and if so, [2] what they see as a realistic mechanism of EU intervention to help make this a reality. Whatever can they say but “sanctions”?
Does anyone know what will be the effect on the anti-BDS amendment that just passed in DC?
Does Resolution 242 as unanimously adopted by the UN Security Council require the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from all of the territories occupied by Israel during the 1967 war? According to Artur J Goldberg one of the drafters of the resolution the answer is no. In the resolution, the words ‘the’ and ‘all’ are omitted. Resolution 242 calls for the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the 1967 conflict, without specifying the extent of the withdrawal. The resolution, therefore, neither commands nor prohibits total withdrawal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_242 There you have the problem, the French text against the English text, and many other different interpretations. The bottom line is, the major movers and shakers all agree, final borders have to be negotiated by all sides. Which means of course if the Israelis don’t agree, the occupations [The West Bank including East Jerusalem, Gaza and the Golan Heights] can continue indefinitely, which suits the Israelis. They have already annexed [de facto] the Golan Heights and hope to add Area C [60% of West Bank] in the near future, the rest to follow. Who is going to stop them?
The EU is not in a position to institute anything like that. It’s not that kind of political organization. It’s not its job. BDS is a people thing, it has to come from the public. Retailers could do it, and would if enough of their customers demanded it.
An excellent article by Peter Berinert, explaining how Muslims have replaced gays and feminists as enemy number one in the US.
“How Muslims replaced gays and feminists as the U.S. right’s cultural enemy number one
The U.S. right’s new focus on Muslims at home is McCarthyite in a very specific sense.”
Excerpts:
“Another is by suggesting, as Bobby Jindal and Fox News have, that Muslims have established “no-go” zones for non-Muslims in some neighborhoods in Europe, with the implication that they might do the same in the United States. (Fox later retracted this claim; Jindal did not.) According to another Pew poll, evangelical Christians believe they suffer more discrimination than do American Muslims.
As America recovers from the Great Recession, some pundits have observed that foreign policy is again becoming central to American politics. But that’s not quite right. Much of what passes for foreign-policy debate is actually the inversion of foreign policy, whereby conservatives try to replace a formidable target abroad with a softer one at home.
Sadly, McCarthyism is not the only precedent in American history for this type of demonization: hyper-nationalist politicians went after German Americans during World War I and Japanese Americans during World War II. Similarly, today, with conservatives frustrated by America’s failed wars in the Middle East and the increasing unassailability of their traditional domestic foes, they are turning on American Muslims for the simplest of political reasons: because they can.”
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.653272