EU set to reassess ties if Israel doesn’t move on peace
Fed up with settlement expansion, officials in Brussels are working on punitive measures to be implemented as soon as the political leadership wants to do so
The European Union is inconspicuously but determinedly threatening to reevaluate bilateral ties with Israel if the Netanyahu government fails to make progress toward a two-state solution and continues its current policy of allowing construction beyond the pre-1967 lines.
The EU’s new policy has gone largely unnoticed due to this summer’s Operation Protective Edge, but EU officials are already busy at work on a set of sanctions against Israel that Brussels could enact whenever the union’s political echelon gives a green light. Indeed, some in the EU are currently considering implementing a mechanism that would immediately penalize Israel for every step deemed unhelpful to the peace process (such as settlement expansion), a senior European diplomat told The Times of Israel.
On July 22, in the middle of the 50-day war with Hamas, the 28 EU foreign ministers issued a joint statement that was widely seen as pro-Israel, as it condemned indiscriminate rocket fire against Israeli civilians and called for the disarmament of all terrorist organizations in Gaza. Even the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem praised the EU for the statement.
However, the text also severely criticized Israel, as the EU has in the past, for various policies vis-à-vis the Palestinians, including continued settlement expansion, “settler violence,” the “worsening of living conditions for Palestinians,” house demolitions, “evictions and forced transfers” and “increasing tensions” at the Temple Mount.
Critically, the joint statement went on to say that the future of bilateral ties is conditional on moves the EU deems helpful to achieve peace, marking the first time such a linkage was mentioned so explicitly.
“The EU underlines that the future development of the relations between the EU and both the Israeli and Palestinian partners will also depend on their engagement towards a lasting peace based on a two-state solution,” the joint statement stressed.
Last week, a spokesperson for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton used a similar formulation in a press release condemning Israel’s decision to advance construction in Jerusalem’s Givat Hamatos neighborhood and to allow Jews to move into houses in Silwan. Both areas are located beyond the pre-1967 lines.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton, during their meeting in Jerusalem, on June 20, 2013. (photo credit: Amos Ben Gershom/ GPO/Flash90)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, with EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton in Jerusalem, June 20, 2013. (photo credit: Amos Ben Gershom/ GPO/Flash90)
“We stress that the future development of relations between the EU and Israel will depend on the latter’s engagement towards a lasting peace based on a two-state solution,” the recent statement read.
The juxtaposition of Israel’s ties with the EU and Jerusalem’s will to establish a Palestinian state sounded like a threat to some.
“Some analysts saw it as a sign of impending action,” noted Andrew Rettman of EUObserver.com, a journalistic website run by a Brussels-based nonprofit. The Qatar-based Gulf Times newspaper understood the EU’s statement to mean that Israel’s plans in East Jerusalem “pose a threat to … Israel’s relations with the European Union.”
For the time being, it should be stressed, the EU has no intention of cutting ties with Israel, nor does it intended to enact very harsh sanctions right away. However, there is little doubt that the union and its 28 member states are becoming increasingly fed up with issuing condemnations whenever Jerusalem announces new plans for construction in East Jerusalem or the West Bank, without being able to do anything about it.
Therefore, EU officials have started working on mechanisms to impose penalties on Israel, the senior European diplomat told The Times of Israel. The plan under consideration is to respond to every Israeli action deemed detrimental to the peace process by implementing a step that would hurt Israel, the diplomat elaborated.
How would this work? The EU has long insisted that existing EU legislation needs to be implemented, which in many cases is not yet the case. If Jerusalem were to approve another building project in East Jerusalem, for example, the union could opt to introduce a labeling regime for products from West Bank settlements.
Brussels argues that EU law requires such labeling, but the EU has hitherto refrained from implementing a labeling regime, partly so as not to disturb US-brokered peace negotiations with the Palestinians. But now that the talks have broken down, and Israel continues to build beyond the Green Line, there is very little that would hold the EU back from requiring such labels on all settlement goods imported to Europe, the diplomat indicated.
While concrete sanctions might not be announced at the meeting of the EU’s foreign ministers on October 20 in Luxembourg, the details of possible punitive measures (such as labeling) are currently being discussed in several working-level meetings in Brussels, the diplomat said. Once the bureaucratic work is completed, the union’s political leaders could implement such measures at a time of their choosing.
The EU is not only brandishing the stick; it is also offering carrots. Were Israelis and Palestinians to make peace, the EU has promised to grant both parties a “Special Privileged Partnership” — a significant upgrade in ties that would include financial, political and security assistance.
“The EU is slowly emerging as a political player in the world. It is increasingly linking its economic power to specific policies,” said Caspar Veldkamp, the Netherlands’ ambassador to Israel. “Regarding Israel, the EU offered the prospect of a special partnership, akin to Switzerland’s relations with the EU, in the event of a final status agreement. At the same time, if Israel continues to announce building decisions and so on, a tendency will grow in the EU to respond to such Israeli steps by implementing specific EU measures.”
Several of these measures were already decided upon by the EU’s foreign ministers in 2012, the ambassador said.
Ambassador for the Netherlands to Israel Caspar Veldkamp, June 10, Amsterdam. (photo credit: Bibi Neury, Photo Republic)
Ambassador Caspar Veldkamp (photo credit: Bibi Neury, Photo Republic)
Veldkamp diagnosed an “erosion of support for Israel in European countries” due to a lack of progress in the peace process. “I am fully aware that you need two parties to make progress. But Europeans expect more initiative from the Israeli side, since they see Israel as the stronger party of the two,” he said. “Moreover, Europeans are increasingly annoyed with Israel’s continuing decisions on building across the Green Line.”
Some smaller member states have already indicated their desire to sanction Israel if the peace process doesn’t advance to their liking.
Last month, Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja warned Jerusalem that trade and other relations might suffer if the peace process doesn’t advance at a satisfactory pace. The EU has offered enough carrots, he told Haaretz, adding that “it also seems that it needs the possibility of sticks. If there is no progress, [Israel] has to be shown that there are costs involved in the stalling,” he said.
A few days later, the foreign minister of Denmark, Martin Lidegaard, similarly threatened “new steps, including a change in our trade relations with Israel,” in case the ceasefire negotiations with Hamas in Cairo didn’t go the way the Europeans expect. Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt later clarified that Lideggard’s statement reflected his private opinion and did not represent the government’s position. “I don’t think this will be discussed in the EU,” she said.
But if Jerusalem continues with its current policies towards Palestinians and settlements, it will be only a matter of time before the EU and its member states decide to reassess the future of bilateral relations with Israel, including the implementation of some type of sanctions.
honeybee Said:
Me too but You really haven’t informed me to what the problem is so I really can’t do much to fix it.
I miss it too more than you know.
All my other suggestions you reject?? and you are free to write direct to me and you know it. Ball is in your court;
mi adorable abeja de la miel dulce
honeybee Said:
Is the chapter completed?
yamit82 Said:
My Blessing on you all others on this post and especially the “long suffering” Ted. Thank you this I shall copy it and send those who will appreciate it. It gave me chills.
yamit82 Said:
Save a chapter for me?????????????????
yamit82 Said:
I so miss Mart Twain. I could have written volumes. xxxxxxxxxooooooooooo
honeybee Said:
Nothing ventured nothing gained.
<@ honeybee:
Y’ va-re-che-cha Adonai v’yish-mire-cha
Ya-er Adonai panav elei-cha vihu-necha
Yi-sah Adonai panav elei-cha
V’ya-sem l’cha shalom v’ya-sem l’cha shalom
The Lord bless you and keep you
May the Lord shine His Face upon you
And be gracious unto you; may the Lord look upon you
And give you peace, and give you peace
Yi-sah Adonai panav elei-cha
V’ya-sem l’cha shalom and give you peace
V’ya-sem l’cha shalom and give you peace
V’ya-sem l’cha shalom and give you peace
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab_gF5sffEw
@ honeybee:
honeybee Said:
@ honeybee:
blockquote> I say send persimmons
TX loves them anything with slightly tangy taste, they are getting ripe now.
_________________________________________
Europeans & persimmons
@ yamit82:
PresentCompany is living proof of that.
Everyone’s words & ideas ‘betray’ them for that they are.
— I’m content with mine.
There’s no accounting for taste.
Oh, is THAT would you’ve been doing all these years???
Efficient time management is not laziness, except for one who has infinite time available for his doings. (Have you?)
@ dove:
Do you NEVER get a story straight???
Since you brought up the matter of celibacy again, I think it only appropriate to post a comment which is part of a previous response of mine to your nonsense about me, and which was intended for another thread (“Blinding History”) — but which did not run, because when I hit “post” after drafting it, I got a prompt from the system, saying, “Sorry, the posting period has expired.” So here it is, now (the pertinent part of it).
@ dove:
That’s not what I said. You’re fullovit, Dove.
Not only do I KNOW what I said — but I also know myself well enough to know what I would be likely to say, and what it would never occur to me to say.
1. I have never claimed to be ‘celibate.’
What I said (and this isn’t the first time I’ve corrected you in this matter) was that you won’t DIE without sex. All the rest — ALL of it — is your drawing conclusions to fit the prearranged funky template in your own twisted imagination.
2. I did not say you were threatened by celibacy OR by my ‘lifestyle.’
What I did say is that you are threatened by the possibility that you, as a woman, cannot (as you assumed) control any man thru his desire. That’s almost a direct quote — and if you contend otherwise, then I suggest you produce the post and settle the matter; put up or shut up.
Why indeed? — but you do. Your comments leave no doubt.
— You certainly ARE badly damaged, Dove, but maybe not in the ways you assume.
LMAO. He has YET to get anything right in re YoursTruly.
Wishful thinking on your part; believing that “dweller is the DORK ” would make it SO much easier to write off my remarks, wouldn’t it?
— (Was “DORK” the name they called you— or maybe one of your kids — in high school?)
@ dove:
Well, of course I deny being a Christian. To be a Christian you have to subscribe to the NICENE CREED (the very touchstone of Xty), which asserts the ‘divinity’ of Christ — a notion which I have always, soundly, REJECTED.
I have NEVER denied Christ himself — and never would, and (God-willing) never will.
I simply don’t join myself to a religion which has grown up around his personality and made him into a god. HE sure-as-blazes never had such notions. Never called anybody a ‘christian.’ (Those who loved him he called his friends — nothing more, nothing less.)
— Frankly, I believe that any religion calling him divine and making a tzimmes over his person & personality has not only missed his meaning but also grieves him profoundly.
Wrong. Catholics ARE Christians because they subscribe to the Nicene Creed.
RC’s also assert the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception — which holds that the mother of haNitzri was herself conceived free of sin. I reject that as well. (It’s rejected also by all self-styled Christians other than RC’s & Orthodox Xtns.)
RC’s also assert the perpetual virginity of Mary — which I reject. She gave birth at least half-a-dozen times after the birth of haNitzri; those were ordinary conceptions. (This also is rejected by all soi-disant Xtns other than RC’s.)
Ergo, I’m not RC or Xtn.
Neither do I. (Nor have I ever preached it, except in your self-spun fantasies.)
And incidentally, neither do RC’s except for their clergy, male & female). Catholics invariably have large families, so it’s absurd to say they preach celibacy in any general sense.
And even the RCC priestly celibacy is a development of only the past thousand yrs, imposed by Pope Leo IX in the 11th century to root out corruption in their priesthood.
Right; and Jews get off on draining the blood of Xtn children for matzoh at Pesach, and for Hamantaschen at Purim. Like those who needed to believe that jive-assed tommyrot, YOU need to believe I’m ‘sexually depraved.’
“Down”? — “like a bat out of hell”? — so hell is ‘UP’ now?
Actually I swoop down on LOTS of subjects. What of it?
I’ve no idea what it is you think I’m “trying to live.” But whatever it is, it can’t possibly bear the remotest resemblance to my life.
@ yamit82:
he expression ‘Manda huevos” it does not signify really to send. It is more like “Has some nerve” It would be the same as: “tiene huevos” or “tiene nisperos” which for a woman sounds softer than the other expression even though everyone reading it would know what it means. Refers to the male genitalia “testicles”.
I love persimmons. I bought about six and when we left my daughter house I left what it was left. Only my granddaughter, my son in law and I eat them. This time of the year are really good.
Remember somebody like CA has some nerve or “Manda huevos”.
@ yamit82:
Sooooooooo what am I chopped liver, I don’t get a blessing???????????????
@ dove:
@ mar55:
Live Long and Prosper: The Jewish Story Behind Spock, Leonard Nimoy’s Star Trek Character
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyiWkWcR86I
@ mar55:
@ dove:
Birkat Kohanim, (Priestly Blessing) Sukkot 5755
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsbu84JqCxA
yamit82 Said:
Gentile/Jewish women, Europeans or persimmons?????????
yamit82 Said:
Yes and borrow a line from the Bard,” Loves Labors Lost”.
If Ban and the UN are capable of such an absurd statement they could also be capable of justifying the re establishment of Auschwitz.
@ the phoenix:
@ mar55:
thank you both for your generous compliments. 🙂
M Devolin Said:
thank you, Michael, and best wishes to you and your family. 🙂
@ honeybee:
I hate them.
honeybee Said:
I do and haven’t missed a thing. Maybe someday I’ll write an autobiography.
@ dove:
Montreal?
yamit82 Said:
You don’t know what you were missing, fool.
yamit82 Said:
TX loves them anything with slightly tangy taste, they are getting ripe now.
@ yamit82:
I did not grow up in a gentile community. I grew up in a Jewish community that had many gentiles in it.
dove Said:
That’s the great weakness of the Jews. They force themselves to believe that others are not what they are but what they want desperately to believe they are.
I grew up as you in a gentile community with gentile norms and gentile stereotypes both good and not good.. My best friends were gentiles and all my great loves were not Jewish girls or women. Only since I came to Israel has that changed. Most gentiles are good people but have been educated to accept through their churches and family biases what amounts to perceptions of Jews that are antisemitic.
Jew hating immigrants did not leave their biases against Jews when the passed through immigration. It remained to various degrees as part of family perceptions of Jews.
If you want to know what someone really thinks of you, look at what they’re ‘WILLING’ to believe about you.
It doesn’t bother me much anymore. Once you understand the problem you can deal with the reality better, No surprises or exceptions. It is what it is and we need to just deal with it in our own way and our own understanding Being hated for being Jewish is great. Gives me once in awhile a reson to Kick Ass. I can still do that.
@ yamit82:
Someone who hated Jews but no longer does. They do exist. His hatred was based on propaganda fed to him….so he travelled to Israel to find out for himself. He didn’t know any Jews. His trip to Israel changed his mind….he was shocked at what he discovered.
They do seem rare…but they do exist.
Of coarse….being a Jew I am not 100% convinced that he really is an ex…but willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for now. Action speak louder than words. He better become one of the so called silent muslim majority and spend the rest of his days exposing the real truth. He said. We have truth on our side. He tried to disprove it but realized he couldn’t disprove the real facts and had to come to grips that he had been fed lies all his life.
@ dove:
What’s an ex antisemite???
@ M Devolin:
Thanks Dev. For me it actually was pretty good this year.
lol…..so I see that curious is back to his inferiority complex. What brought that on?
1. He’s mad because he thinks that we are holding up the show?
2. He’s mad because he is not part of our show?
So, in his effort he is trying to claim that we are no different, no better, just as evil as our enemies?
I attended a class during the High Holidays given by an ex-anti-semite who had to relocate due to death threats. He is British and muslim. He explained how the propaganda and media war is winning the hearts and minds of the young. He did not want to acknowledge that he was wrong about the Jews…but evidence proved him wrong.
“Turn not to the right hand or to the left hand but remove your foot from evil.” -Proverbs
This proverb, for me, means: “remove” is the key word here. It does not advocate a “middle way.” Rather it means to remove onself absolutely from noetic adventure and instead choose the G-D of the Jewish people and the wisdom and instruction of the Jewish people as one’s light. There is no allowance for vacillation; there is room for discussion and reflection within that light, but a folly for one to step outside that light. “I Wisdom dwell with Prudence and find out knowledge of witty inventions.” -Proverbs
“3a – Being Jewish means being a symbol – a symbol of G-d’s existence and a symbol of G-d’s morality. The establishment and existence of Israel, which is quite a miracle, is a symbol of divine intervention in our world. Every Jew is such a symbol, whether he want’s it or not, whether he acknowledges it or not.
“3b- The world is divided into those that acknowledge G-d’s existence and morality and those that oppose it. These two forces are embodied by the Jewish culture that embraces life, and Palestinian-Arab-Muslim culture that embraces death.
“4- These simple truths are terrible to acknowledge.”
These are my core beliefs, right down to the letter. Well said, Yamit.
A few things I learned this year:
1 – There exists a surprisingly large number of people that believe that genocide is a favorable solution to political problems, as long as these problems involve Jews. In the West these people are called “liberals”. I guess that’s because they want to liberate the world from Jews. In the Middle-East we just call them “Arab-Muslims”.
2 – BB can give one hell of a speech, but he is still a wimp and he is married to Sarah, a perfect combination of wickedness and stupidity.
3a – Being Jewish means being a symbol – a symbol of G-d’s existence and a symbol of G-d’s morality. The establishment and existence of Israel, which is quite a miracle, is a symbol of divine intervention in our world. Every Jew is such a symbol, whether he want’s it or not, whether he acknowledges it or not.
3b- The world is divided into those that acknowledge G-d’s existence and morality and those that oppose it. These two forces are embodied by the Jewish culture that embraces life, and Palestinian-Arab-Muslim culture that embraces death.
4- These simple truths are terrible to acknowledge.
“For a deadly blow let him pay with a deadly blow: it is for him who has done a deed to suffer.” -Aeschyius
As I wrote above, the Arab Muslim made the bed he now lays upon. The Jews offered them a peaceful coexistence long before 1948 but it was spat upon as something vile. The Arab Muslim chose to fight the Jew. Herein resides their folly. They picked a fight with a people (the Jews) who have survived for millennia not only Arab Muslim hatred, but also Christian hatred and the Nazi Holocaust. Who can overcome such a people? But the Arab Muslim, rendered obtuse not only by religiously incited hatred but also (and in many cases more so) by imperialistic fantasy, fails to acknowledge this blatant reality and so prolongs the suffering of the Palestinian people in order to use that same suffering as a point of condemnation of Jews, Judaism (Zionism) and the State of Israel. So CA and his use of Arab Muslim antisemitic revisionist and nascent Middle Eastern history means fuck all to me, less than the shit that comes out of my ass. All history lessons from the antisemite are those of a history invented by the antisemite to serve his anti-Jewish agenda. CA is no different than Joseph Goebbels in this respect. Fuck him and his jihadist friends.
“And while Arab hostility could be ameliorated through economic incentives, these measures were necessarily of limited value so long as the Arabs retained the hope of destroying the Jewish National Home by force of arms.” -Efraim Karsh, from ‘Palestine Betrayed’
“It was indeed Arab political hostility in the wake of World War 1, as opposed to grassroots coexistence, that largely underlay the emphasis on Zionism’s economic payoffs as an ameliorating factor.” -Efraim Karsh, from ‘Palestine Betrayed’
Thanks, phoenix.
@ M Devolin:
You A.R.E. a very special person, Michael.
May God bless you!
(and yours, of course… 🙂 )
“What happened? We mention your name and you appear????”
Actually, that’s how it works for my daughters and my wife, Yamit. LOL
I was cutting firewood too. Gave a load of it at way below the going price to a friend who didn’t have any. We’re getting an early cold. Some say it’s going to be another long and hard winter, like the last one.
@ dove:
Dovele In the world we now live in anybody can claim whatever they want. His words and ideas betray him for what he is. It ain’t pretty !!!
I will mock him but no longer debate him.
A waste of my time and anyone else’s
He is lazy as well.
mar55 Said:
I say send persimmons!?????
@ yamit82:
Dweller always denies being a christian which goes strongly against the christian religion.
My take on it is that he is NOT christian – he is catholic. His religious beliefs are catholic. Christians don’t preach celibacy. He is sexually depraved ….by his own choosing?? How screwed up is that? But notice…..how he swoops down like a bat out of hell on the subject.
It is because what he is trying to live is not normal….nor is it healthy OR recommended by G-d. The opposite is true. I could find scripture to back that up but it’s Sat nite….too laid back for that right now.
@ the phoenix:that is from My cousin Vinnie. Really funny movie.
Mr. Ross: Excellent answer to CA. I do not trust that two face snake. He is as audacious and hypocritical as you can get in South America. Some nerve… Manda huevos! No, digo manda nisperos!
@ dweller:
http://youtu.be/Sd1JCJ1iSQg
@ yamit82:
No, actually marketing had been around since before Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery.
But then, Christians didn’t invent bearing false witness against their neighbor either. . . .
Again, no. All I did say was that Paul’s renowned remark — “I became [culturally] as a Jew to the Jews, as a Greek to the Greeks, etc” — was an instance of something analogous to marketing. Nothing dishonorable or disreputable about it. Quite rational & prudent actually. You wouldn’t enter a courtroom dressed for a swimming pool party.
What’s more, those who choose to take the remark for ‘deceit’ — or ‘swindling’ or ‘scamming’ or ‘lying’ — on the part of Paul (whose writing preceded the existence of “Christians” by well over a century) are really telling us something LESS about “Christians” than about their OWN inwardly-held belief about MARKETING (& business generally): ‘deceit,’ ‘swindling,’ ‘scamming,’ ‘lying’. . . .
@ M Devolin:
What happened? We mention your name and you appear????
Thanks dev, choppin wood again for the winter???
“More satisfying that way isn’t it? It is for me.”
For me too, Yamit. Hope you had a good Yom Kippur. And the same to all my Jewish friends here, Dove, Phoenix, Mr. Ross, Mr. Harris, and all.
yamit82 Said:
Makes sense to me.
So now where IS this american ?
I even told him that I agree with him… ;-!
bernard ross Said:
The christians invented marketing. dweller said so!!!!
@ M Devolin:
Think of it this way. We need a resident liberal and we need a resident Jew Hater. Gets our collective hot juices up.
We are best able to articulate our concerns and our positions when directed against something or someone less abstract. We can focus and personalize our kick backs.
More satisfying that way isn’t it? It is for me.