More than 400 European parliamentarians have urged EU countries to use Joe Biden’s new presidency as an opportunity to stop what they term Israel’s “de-facto annexation” of the occupied West Bank.
In a letter recently sent to the European foreign ministers and EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, the European legislators urged their countries to take an action to stop Israel’s annexation of the West Bank and halt building of more illegal settlements on the occupied Palestinian territories, arguing that Biden’s administration presents a chance to correct the course of action in the Middle East diplomacy.
“Developments on the ground clearly point to a reality of a rapidly progressing de facto annexation, especially through accelerated settlement expansion and demolitions of Palestinian structures,” said the letter.
On taking office, President Biden announced that he is reversing Trump’s stance towards the peace process by reiterating his support to the two-state solution. Though he did not reveal intention to move the US embassy back to Tel Aviv, Biden has expressed opposition to West Bank annexation and to the building of new settlements.
Few days before Biden’s inauguration, Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled a plan to build 800 new settler homes in the occupied West Bank. By sodoing, Netanyahu is trying to boost his chances in the coming elections even with the expected opposition of the new US administration of Joe Bide who had clashed with Israel over the settlement expansion in the past during his term as vice president during the Obama administration.
However, this opposition did not help much in suspending the building of more settlements on the occupied Palestinian territories during rule of Obama. Instead, it just suspended the peace talks in 2014.
Now,with Biden in office, why does not Europe join hands with the US to show more than mere condemnation to the illegal building of Jewish settlements on the Palestinian territories?
The least for Europe to do today is to announce recognition of the Palestinian state as Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn called for in 2019 after Trump’s Secretary of State had announced US support to Israel’s settlement building strategy.
“Recognising Palestine as a state would be neither a favour nor a carte blanche; but rather a mere recognition of the right of the Palestinian people to their independent state,” Asselborn said, adding that such move would not be meant against Israel,but a measure intended to pave the way for the two-state solution.
Actually, Asselborn was not the first official to call for Europe’s recognition of the Palestinian state. Many European parliamentarians had urged their governments to follow suit of Sweden and recognise an independent Palestinian state so as to curb more erosion of the Palestinian territories under the growing Jewish settlements.
The US as well as Israel continued to oppose any move to recognise Palestine under false conviction that it would abort the peace talks. However, the fact proved that delay in making such a move hindered all efforts to take firm action against the continuous Israeli violation of international law.
Meanwhile, recognising Palestinian state is not only in line with world commitment to the two-state solution but it turns the Israel’s building of Jewish settlements and annexation of Palestinian territories into a conquest of another country by force and not a mere extension of sovereignty of the military occupier over occupied territory as Israel claims.
Early this year, Cairo hosted a quartet meeting of foreign ministers of Jordan, France, Germany and Egypt to discuss means of reviving the peace process on basis of two-state solution. In the meantime, Cairo brokered reconciliation talks between Palestinian rivals in preparation for Palestinian elections.
Therefore, this letter penned by the European parliamentarians this week might be a step in the direction of forming a united front between Europe, the US and the Arab countries to pressure Israel to reach permanent fair solution to the Palestinian crisis, that would help create an independent Palestinian state on the territories occupied in 1967.
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