By STUART WINER, TOI, July 17, 2013,
A senior European Union representative in Israel on Wednesday sought to downplay the significance of new measures that target Israeli institutions in the West Bank.
“If people knew what it was really about, they would be much less upset,” Sandra De Waele, EU first counsellor, told The Times of Israel, stressing that the regulations did not apply to trade agreements or the marketing of products from the West Bank.
De Waele clarified that the directive offers guidelines that apply to grants, awards, and prizes funded by the European Union itself, and not to funding from individual member states. In addition, she pointed out, the guidelines merely reiterate what has been EU policy for years.
“It’s about putting the rules of the game in writing,” she said, and noted that the document was drawn up by EU clerks and not voted on at the ministerial level.
In a four-page document, the EU details the full conditions under which further cooperation with Israeli entities can continue. The document is due to be released Friday and was drafted by the European Commission.
The EU makes clear in the document that it “does not recognize Israel’s sovereignty over any of the territories… and does not consider them to be part of Israel’s territory, irrespective of their legal status under domestic Israeli law.”
The guidelines also state that “only Israeli entities having their place of establishment within Israel’s pre-1967 borders will be considered eligible.”
De Waele confirmed that Israeli officials were aware of the document before its existence was revealed publicly on Tuesday, but would not comment on exactly when the Foreign Ministry was first informed of it. She also said she doubted that the matter had come up in a conversation between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton when the two met last month, as she said it was too minor an issue.
“I would be surprised if it was discussed at that level,” she said.
On Tuesday, Netanyahu lambasted the EU, saying, “We will not accept any foreign dictates about our borders. This matter will only be determined through direct negotiation between the [two] sides” of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Meanwhile, the Foreign Ministry rejected reports that it had first been informed last December of the forthcoming European Union directive but failed to do anything about the new regulations. According to reports in the Hebrew press, despite the fact that the Israeli Embassy to the EU in Brussels learned of the proposed regulations several months ago, the details were only received in Jerusalem on Sunday and brought before the government on Monday.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman told The Times of Israel that its Brussels office had only been given word of the initiative last week and called accusations that it had mishandled the directive “ridiculous.”
Deputy Foreign Ministry Ze’ev Elkin acknowledged Wednesday that the new directive had caught his ministry by surprise. “The real question we have to ask ourselves is how we didn’t get wind [of the measures] in the preparation stage; after all, it takes more than a day to put such a document together,” he told Army Radio.
Elkin noted that as the most senior figure in the Foreign Ministry, he was the proper target for any criticism regarding the matter, rather than Israel’s ambassador to the EU.
The Foreign Ministry has been operating without an appointed minister since last December when then foreign minister Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu) resigned his position in the wake of an indictment on breach of trust charges. Netanyahu agreed to reserve the position for Liberman to take up again should he be acquitted.
The European Union’s decision to stop all financial interaction with Israeli enterprises in the West Bank is an attempt to put pressure on Israel that the government can’t afford to ignore, Justice Minister Tzipi Livini (Hatnua) warned Wednesday.
“It’s a wake -up call,” Livni told Army Radio. “We can easily get to a point where we are isolated by Europe.”
Livni, who is charged with overseeing negotiations with the Palestinians, said the new directives from the EU show that things are not as well with Europe as many seem to believe.
“It’s a bad decision for Israel, and we need to learn the lessons,” she said. “The best way to preserve the interests of Israel is to engage in negotiations” with the Palestinians.
Livni asserted that the EU decision was brought on by frustration over Israel’s apparently contradictory policies regarding negotiations and settlement construction.
“It’s very difficult for Israel to explain that we want two states for two peoples and at the same time to continue building settlements,” she said. “That is a colonial point of view.”
Livini noted that no country in the world, including the United States, supported Israeli settlements over the 1967 lines.
yamit82 Said:
http://youtu.be/Rx07A9LWBJA
@ honeybee:
She melted!
yamit82 Said:
For Yamit 82
http://youtu.be/PHQLQ1Rc_Js
yamit82 Said:
Just heared that blessed news on Fox and was going inform you. I should have known you would beat to the finnish line.
Allahu-Akbar, Jew hater Arab Helen Thomas is DEAD!!!!! 🙂
The only way to change world opinion is to show the roots of ownership of the political rights to Palestine west of the Jordan River is vested in World Jewry. In 1920 World Jewry received recognition of its rightful ownership of those political or national rights but to avoid an antidemocratic government, only a beneficial ownership was initially recognized. Legal ownership and dominion was to await an increase in Jewish population in the area to be governed to a Jewish population majority and its capability of exercising sovereignty. There is no getting around that Jews are occupying Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem. What is needed is to show they are occupying land for which they have the political rights and therefore the exclusive right to establish a government.
Jews “occupation” is now considered to be immoral but how can governing in a land in which you have the exclusive right to govern under International Law be immoral? The Government of Israel has never said this. It has let the Arab claim of the fake Palestinian Arab People go almost unchallenged. When the GOI makes that challenge, as it would if it approved the Levy Committee Report, it can say “sure we occupy Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem. We have done so since we liberated them in 1967. They are occupied and liberated by their owners from the illegal occupation by Jordan. Any claim to them by Arabs living in Palestine must be frivolous as the claim they made for these political rights at the Paris Peace talks has been rejected by the Principal Allied War Powers (PAWP). PAWP acquired these rights after winning a defensive war against the Ottoman Empire and allocated them to World Jewry because of the long association of Jews with Palestine. They created a trust to hold these rights until such time as the Jews could exercise sovereignty without establishing an antidemocratic government as the Jews were in the minority in Palestine at that time.” See Benzimra, Jewish Peoples Rights to the Land of Israel, and Brand, ROOTS OF ISRAEL’S SOVEREIGNTY AND BOUNDARIES IN INTERNATIONAL LAW: IN DEFENSE OF THE LEVY REPORT http://www.think-israel.org/brand.allegedoccupation.html The purpose of all this was to recognize the claim of the Jewish People to Palestine without immediately creating an antidemocratic government. The method they chose was a good one but what they chose and why they chose it has become obscured by the sands of time.
I recall speaking to a resident of Yesha who worked at a science lab in Tel Aviv University lamenting that his boss up there said “I don’t care how much is given away…so long as they leave my lab alone.” There you have the problem in a nutshell.
These are the same Euro-Nazi scum who think Jews overreacted to the Shoah.
F*ck them. Better yet, n*ke them.
I can’t stand Livni’s whining cowardice. Try behaving like a strong, proud Jew instead of subservient to her EU masters.
Filthy lying euro trash adds insult to injury. GOI must end euro libels of illegal jewsih settlement by initiating a massive settlement program of affirmative action to correct past obstruction by UK, JOrdan and Israel.
a low life obvious agent of foreign interests bought and paid for by foreign money. She is without a shred of dignity in her frantic rush to submit Israel to the subservience of the Jews perennial jew killers and masters. A despicable person who brings nothing to Israel but the threats of her masters and puppeteers. These termites need to be purged from the jewish people.
End the butt kissing and show some dignity.
Tzipi Livni thinks that by evicting every Jew from Judea and Samaria, the world will like Israel again.
The only problem is how come the world didn’t like Israel in 1967 before a single settlement was ever established and the world did not lift a finger in Israel’s defense when it was threatened with Arab encirclement?
Calling the Zionist enterprise a colonial viewpoint as she does, is a preposterous rewrite of Jewish history! Hating your fellow Jews won’t even make the Arabs like you and why would they care what Livni thinks of her own country?
Peace is not going to happen even if Israel signs away every last square centimeter of Jewish land to the Arabs.