Israel Criticizes New EU Funding Rules
Israeli officials are reacting angrily to new European Union funding rules: Israel has condemned new European Union guidelines banning EU funding of projects in territories occupied by Israel since the 1967 Middle East war. From 2014, such agreements with Israel will exclude East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. Israeli minister ...
Israeli officials are reacting angrily to new European Union funding rules:
Israeli officials are reacting angrily to new European Union funding rules:
Israel has condemned new European Union guidelines banning EU funding of projects in territories occupied by Israel since the 1967 Middle East war.
From 2014, such agreements with Israel will exclude East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights.
Israeli minister Silvan Shalom said the measure was a "big mistake" which cast doubt on the EU’s impartiality in the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
According to this Haaretz account, Israeli officials are upset that a difference of opinion that had previously been worked through informally has now been memorialized as EU policy:
A senior Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the new ruling, which was published on June 30, as an "earthquake."
"This is the first time such an official, explicit guideline has been published by the European Union bodies," the senior official said. "Until today there were understandings and quiet agreements that the Union does not work beyond the Green Line [the pre-1967-war border]; now this has become a formal, binding policy."
The official noted that the significance of the regulation is both practical and political: From now on, if the Israeli government wants to sign agreements with the European Union or one of its member states, it will have to recognize in writing that the West Bank settlements are not part of Israel.
EU foreign minister Catherine Ashton describes the new guidelines as a simple extension of the bloc’s longstanding position on the occupied territories. Via the FT:
EU officials said the new rules were introduced at the behest of the European parliament, where some members have complained about cases of Israeli companies in the occupied West Bank or East Jerusalem that have benefited from EU largesse. They will go into effect when the bloc’s next seven-year budget cycle begins in January.
“In conformity with the [EU’s] longstanding position that Israeli settlements are illegal under international law and with the non-recognition by the EU of Israel’s sovereignty over the occupied territories irrespective of their legal status under domestic Israeli law, the commission has pledged to the European Parliament to issue such guidelines,” said a spokesperson for Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief.
David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist
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