Israel\u2019s \u201cde facto annexation\u201d of the West Bank has been met with a relatively mild EU rebuke, indicating business as usual.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A slew of new Israeli laws helping Jewish settlers to buy Palestinian land, approved by the Israeli security cabinet on Sunday (8 February), was \u201centrenching Israeli sovereignty on the ground, de facto\u201d, said the pro-settler Yesha Council<\/a> on Monday.\u00a0<\/p>\n Israeli defence minister Israel Katz and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said it would \u201cenable accelerated development of settlement on the ground\u201d.<\/p>\n Smotrich also pledged to \u201ccontinue to kill the idea of a Palestinian state\u201d.<\/p>\n The pro-two state Israeli NGO Peace Now<\/a> called the legal change \u201ca de facto annexation\u201d.<\/p>\n Eight majority-Muslim states, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, also called it \u201cillegal annexation\u201d, and \u201ccondemned [the move] in the strongest terms<\/a>\u201c.<\/p>\n But for his part, an EU Commission spokesman said on Monday in Brussels only that the EU \u201ccondemned\u201d the step, which went \u201cin the wrong direction\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n He also said draft EU sanctions on Israel<\/a>, proposed by Commission president Ursula von der Leyen last September, remained \u201con the table\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sunday\u2019s new Israeli laws will expedite settler land-purchases, extend Israeli administrative control into parts of the West Bank (so called \u2018Areas A and B\u2019), and give Israel powers to change the status of disputed religious sites, such as The Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron \u2014 the most populous town in the West Bank.\u00a0<\/p>\n Three tiers of \u2018condemnation\u2019<\/p>\n In EU diplomatic jargon, the bloc \u201ccondemns\u201d foreign actions, \u201cstrongly condemns\u201d them, or \u201ccondemns in the strongest possible terms\u201d (as it did Russia\u2019s full invasion of Ukraine in 2022).\u00a0<\/p>\n And its use of the mildest version on Monday indicated there will be no follow-up action, as there was on Russia in 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n Von der Leyen\u2019s draft sanctions had envisaged suspending an EU-Israel trade-perk agreement (worth billions of euros) and blacklisting Smotrich and Israeli security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir (who made genocidal remarks in the Gaza war).\u00a0<\/p>\n The sanctions were \u201cput on the shelf\u201d after a US-brokered ceasefire on 10 October and have never been discussed since in the EU Council, diplomats said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Israeli arms firms, such as Rafael, and the Israeli defence ministry remain eligible for the EU\u2019s \u2018Horizon\u2019 science-programme<\/a> grants despite their storied role in Gaza atrocities, for instance, the EU Commission previously confirmed to EUobserver.\u00a0<\/p>\n And the only counter-measure the EU ever adopted was freezing \u20ac14m of bilateral payments for Israeli cultural projects, excluding grants for the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem.\u00a0<\/p>\n De jure annexation of the West Bank would go against a promise by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s to his main ally on the world stage, US president Donald Trump.\u00a0<\/p>\n But \u2018de facto annexation\u2019 has been creeping forward<\/a> since 1967, when Israel conquered the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the Six-Day War.<\/p>\n The settler population in the West Bank grew by some 6,000 a year in the 1980s and 15,500 a year in the past 20 years, to reach over 500,000 today, while a further 230,000 settlers have come to live in East Jerusalem .\u00a0<\/p>\n Israel has also started construction of settlements in the \u2018E1\u2019 area in the West Bank, which would cut the territory in two, despite repeated EU appeals.\u00a0<\/p>\n Israeli settler attacks and military raids to displace Palestinian farmers have intensified this year, according to a UN flash report<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n