Trump administration still looking to approve sovereignty moves this month, despite COVID-related delays.
By TOVAH LAZAROFF and OMRI NAHMIAS, JPOST JULY 14, 2020
A European Union flag flies outside the European Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, December 19, 2019.
The European Union, Denmark and the Palestinian Authority signed an agreement on Tuesday to build 16 infrastructure projects for the Palestinians in Area C. The EU reaffirmed its opposition to Israel extending its sovereignty in that area.
Area C is the part of the West Bank under Israeli control, according to the Oslo Accords. Any construction, including structures built for Palestinians, must be approved by the IDF, which governs it.
The EU has funded many illegal Palestinian projects in Area C, built without the IDF’s approval, in recent years. This construction is part of a 2012 PA plan to create Palestinian contiguity in the area, surrounding and isolating Israeli settlements. The EU announced its support for the plan that same year in a document called “Land Development and Access to Basic Infrastructure in Area C.”<
The new, €5.8 million EU-Denmark-PA agreement calls for completing 16 “social infrastructure projects,” including schools, roads, multipurpose buildings, reservoirs and others, in 15 localities in Area C to benefit more than 24,000 Palestinians.
The latest EU construction plan in Area C comes after repeated European warnings against Israel extending its law to parts of the West Bank, as described in US President Donald Trump’s peace plan.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly announced his intention to make sovereignty moves this summer, though he has not specified what they would be. The plan would allow Israel to apply sovereignty to 30% of the West Bank, including all Israeli settlements and the Jordan Valley, but Netanyahu and Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz have discussed extending Israeli law to a more limited area.
In a statement on the construction plan’s announcement, EU representative to Ramallah Sven Kuhn von Burgsdorff said: “The EU considers Area C an integral part of the occupied Palestinian territories… We will not recognize any changes to the pre-1967 borders, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by both sides, and we do not recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the territories occupied since 1967.”
“We remain committed to a fair and negotiated two-state solution, which is the only way to achieve peace, development and security,” he added.
The EU diplomat’s comments came a day after 11 European foreign ministers asked EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell to compile a list of concrete steps they could take if Israel extends its law to any part of the West Bank.
Their letter asked for “clarity on the legal and political implications of annexation… as well as a list of possible actions in response to it, including the automatic triggers of all EU-IL agreements and the respective responsibilities of the [European] Commission.”
“Time is short… We are concerned that the window to deter annexation is fast closing,” the foreign ministers wrote, saying a list of responses would “contribute to our efforts to deter annexation.”
The foreign ministers of France, Italy, Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Portugal and Malta signed the letter, Haaretz reported. Several diplomats confirmed the report.
The Trump administration is still interested in promoting annexation in the upcoming month, an administration official told The Jerusalem Post.
However, it is not expected to make a decision this week, the official said. The peace team, spearheaded by Special Adviser to the President Jared Kushner, is still discussing the details and the maps they would like to show Trump.
With the two countries currently focused on domestic issues, such as COVID-19, it would take a couple of weeks before Kushner’s team would take the matter to the president’s desk for a final decision, according to the official.
Sources close to Knesset Speaker Yariv Levin, a member of the joint US-Israel committee to determine where Israel would apply sovereignty, said he admitted that the US is not able to give any attention to the matter, Army Radio reported.
Levin’s office would not confirm the quote, but the sources said Israel would not act without US approval.
The Knesset Land of Israel caucus called for the Ministerial Legislative Committee to vote on Sunday to advance legislation that would allow for annexation of West Bank settlements.
Co-chairs Bezalel Smotrich (Yamina) and Haim Katz (Likud) had filed a bill on Monday that would allow for the Knesset to apply sovereignty to portions of Area C of the West Bank where the settlements are located.
Right-wing politicians and settler leaders do not want to wait. On Tuesday, Smotrich and Katz asked Knesset House Committee chairman Eitan Ginzberg (Blue and White) to fast-track the bill, which typically would need 45 days before coming before the Ministerial Legislative Committee.
“The window of opportunity for this historic act may close soon,” Smotrich and Katz said in a statement. “There is broad agreement, however, among the coalition and the opposition parties in the Knesset to advance the application of sovereignty.”
On Tuesday, Strategic Affairs Minister Orit Farkash-Hacohen (Blue and White) said the security cabinet has not met to discuss the potential ramifications of extending Israel law in the West Bank.
“We need an organized process in which the security agencies’ analysis and the economic analysis will be heard,” she said at “The Price of Annexation” virtual conference held by business newspaper Calcalist. “Even something that is part of a plan that creates opportunities for the state must be executed at the best time so we will be exposed to minimal criticism.”
Israel should stop talking about plans to annex portions of the West Bank, which only needlessly inflame the region, MK Moshe Ya’alon (Yesh Atid-Telem) said at the conference.
“We have to be quiet and not place Israeli politics into the mix,” he said.
The only person who can determine whether there will be sovereignty is Trump, who “understands that there is a problem,” said Ya’alon, who is a former defense minister and former IDF chief of staff.
@ Edgar G.:
I see the “edit time” has vanished. I’d like to add that, coming from the EU , they must have come through Israeli ports, Also trucked on wide flat-beds on Israeli roads….!!!
Perhaps the EU has found the secret of invisibility..?? Maybe sprayed it on the load..
HOW COME ??? (ya do me like ya do-do-do)
@ dreuveni:
“Denied Entry” …Indeed…!! I have queried many times, on THIS site, as to HOW the hell these large prefab buildings could get into Area C without anyone seeing or knowing about them. They require over-sized heavy transport, and wide road space. I know this because of personal experience, – and using ordinary common-sense.
No answer…!!.
@ Reader:
READER- I totally agree with your last 3 lines. Not just neglect, but criminal neglect. !!
@ Reader:
READER- I totally agree with your last 3 lines.
@ dreuveni:
I suggested this MANY times, saying…that “the bulldozers should flatten all the EU illegal structures; then they should be packed on flat-deck trucks and sent back to the EU, F.O.B. (meaning that the sender’s responsibility ceases as soon as the items are on board, and the recipient pays all freight, customs, and brokers fees etc).
Nobody listened..I became tired of repeating the same things and MANY other subjects which are again being passionately turned over (and chewed up again), by our zealous members. I prefer just to read the comments, all the suggestions already made long ago and many times-by many. . Only casual attention is paid to the comments of others, although occasionally a dialogue ensues, which dies off, to be revived anew later, by others, spurred by some headline, or article.
Many of the article writers, going over thoroughly trampled ground, do it merely to be paid ,(called pot-boilers) or because it becomes topical again-for the moment-, often knowing that what they write is worthless-according to a treatise on this very subject.
Just my opinion.
@ Michael S:
I agree with you, Michael, 100%.
I don’t understand why so few people are able to see it.
All the hopes, promises, and good intentions disappear as soon as agreements are concluded.
In this case, Israel most likely would have to move at least 50,000 settlers to prevent them from being trapped – this is just not doable.
I cannot say it often enough – this situation is caused by the failure of Israel to settle Judea and Samaria while letting the Arabs do it instead.
I hope there is still a way to solve this problem.
@ Reader:
Hi, Reader
I just looked at the map, as though the deal was for a prospective home. Those Jewish communities were not built with the eye of being part of a gerrymander state, surrounded by hostile enemies on every side. This is gerrymandering on a ridiculous scale — or, very appropriately, an APARTHEID state: with the JEWS living in the “Bantustans”.
The map is everything. In a few years’ time, no matter who promises what, it will be the ONLY thing left of this “Deal of the Century”. It also creates novel boundaries that will almost certainly be used in future as precedents. Israel is under no compulsion to accept this thing, and should escape while it can.
That’s my opinion, based on very limited information.
@ Michael S:
I’ve just looked at the map – it’s even crazier than I thought – the majority of the settlements in the West Bank are ARAB.
PLUS the Jewish settlements are going to be surrounded by high walls.
This map could only result from severe restrictions on the Jewish settlement construction in preparation for the 2-state “solution” while the Arabs were permitted to establish facts on the ground.
@ Michael S:
The Katz-Smotrich plan takes care of these issues ON PAPER but, in reality (if it even passes), CAN IT (or will it) BE ENFORCED by Israel?
It may turn out that on the ground it will be toothless and result in the same problems as you listed but the plan’s alleged corrections will help sell it to the Israelis.
If Israel agrees to either plan, the Arabs will possess the heights and Israel – the valleys, the same as the” three sausages” in 1947.
The” three sausages” would be located inside the old malarial lines (the lowlands) and the Arab state would be situated on the heights (which are always strategic – better to shoot from).
I also don’t like what is happening in Iran because it is not in the interests of Israel to have a very angry neighbor right now who hates Israel under the best of circumstances.
I just looked at the map, and I don’t like it:
https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/uploads/Maps/westbank-trump-full-annex-map-POL3332-HiRes.jpg
If this map were to become the “two state” map, which it VERY WELL COULD, it’s insane! It leaves no room for the Israeli communities to grow, and leaves many of them completely isolated. These are worse than the “Auschwitz borders” of the early 1960s, leaving Israelis at the mercy of enemy forces on superior terrain. Where is the “Israel First” counterpart to Trump’s “America First”?
The map looks like something out of the Kovno Ghetto. Nothing is signed yet. Reject it. Trump will win in November, most likely; and if he doesn’t, the map will only be used against Israel. ISRAEL SHOULD NOT BE IN A HURRY.
@ dreuveni:
very good idea; make EU pay removal costs for illegal building on land rightfully belonging to Israel. Area C, all of it, should be a given area for immediate annexation. All Arab building for any purpose in this sector must be destroyed or converted into Jewish governmental, military or communal use.
@ greenrobot:
“behind the scenes?” Trying to figure out the best sales pitch for “sovereignty” aka the 2-state solution and, likely, staging the last minute performance by Israel’s politicians and the media entitled “OH, NO, THEY MADE US ACCEPT THE 2-STATE SOLUTION!!! We never wanted it, look how we suffer!”
The truth is that Israel was making preparations for the 2-state (FINAL) solution for decades, by freezing Jewish construction and satisfying the Arab “claims” for the land whenever they bothered to present them, painstakingly destroying “illegal” Jewish structures while letting the EU and the Arabs build as much as they wanted with the silent consent of the IDF, by permitting the EU drones to spy on the Jewish settlement construction, by pretending not to notice how the Arab construction is destroying the ancient Jewish artifacts, etc.
And NOW, all of a sudden (after 3 years of the plan in preparation by Netanyahu), they discovered this histEric opportunity to GRAB the whole 30% – as a poison pill – (of the 100% of their OWN land) of Judea and Samaria!
MKs Katz and Smotrich are trying to save face by making it look better BUT IS THEIR PLAN ENFORCEABLE when the events might already have gone too far?
Why the hesitation?. Declare over the 30%. Destroy the illegal structures in Area C. What is going on behind the scenes?
@stuart: Good argument. However, they should be a) denied entry to Israel like Covid carriers, b) ejected from any location within “”Area C”, c) presented with the bill to enforce their ejection and the removal/destruction of anything they build without permission.
If the EU mentions “Area C” in their proposal, does this not also mean that they acknowledge the Oslo Accords which requires IDF approval? Or, does the fact
of previously allowing such construction without IDF consent make the precedent?