Israel-Palestine Opinion: Want a Peace Process? Use Trade Policy and Stop the Settlements (Settler Watch)

West Bank Settlement of Ofra (Reuters)Settler Watch writes a guest opinion piece to EA:

The UN Security Council is expected today to decide on the application by Palestine for recognition as a full member of the United Nations. The approach will be rejected, if only because the US has sworn to use its veto if the Palestinians secure the necessary votes for passage.

The European Union and US have accused the Palestinians of damaging the stalled peace process with their application. That, to be blunt, is a diversion: the serious problem --– that Israel has accelerated its colonisation of the area where the Palestinians plan to establish their state –--- continues to be treated with indulgence. If the peace process to be more than a mythical slogan, and a two-state solution is to be countenanced, the European Union must use trade policy to force Israel to respect international law and stop their expansion of settlements.

In June 1967, Israel occupied Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Since then, every Israeli government has violated international law by allowing and encouraging its people to move to settlements in that occupied territory. Today more than 500,000 settlers live where a future state for the Palestinians is supposed to be established.

The settlements are the reason why the West Bank has been divided up into small islands of Palestinian land, separated by checkpoints and roads that only Israeli settlers, who control 2/5th of the land, are permitted to use. Palestinians are unable to build on much of their territory and their trade and access to land, jobs, hospitals and schools is restricted.

The Israeli settlement policy has created a system where a person’s rights are determined on the basis of their national identity. Settlers obey Israeli civil law while Palestinians in the same area live under military tribunals. The situation constitutes a fundamental violation of the right to equal treatment enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

A united international community, including the US, EU, and UN, must conclude believes that Israeli settlements constitute a major obstacle to peace. These parties have claimed in countless statements that Israel’s continuing construction of settlements undermines the attempts to revive the peace negotiations and threatens the prospects of a two-state solution, but decades of that criticism has been ineffective. Population growth in the settlements is now two and a half times higher than inside Israel.

Nothing suggests that the Israeli government is willing to reconsider its settlement policy. On the contrary, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently stated that construction in the occupied East Jerusalem is “important” and not only a “right” but even a “duty”. At the end of October, Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon equated a possible freeze in the construction of the settlements with the “ethnic cleansing” of Jews. Minister of Foreign Affairs Avigdor Lieberman, himself a settler, has repeatedly made it clear that the Israeli government will continue the policy of expansion.

In September, Israeli authorities decided to forcibly evict 27,000 Bedouins living in the West Bank. The first displacement is planned for January 2012 and will include 2,300 Bedouins currently living on land where Israel plans to build settlements. The Bedouins must move from their lean-tos and tin huts to an area adjacent to Jerusalem’s main garbage dump, which the Israeli authorities have previous condemned as a health hazard. Meanwhile, the Government has decided to build 3,700 new houses in the settlements.

Even as Israel ignores the demands of the wider world and despite obvious violations of international law, it has been rewarded with an economically beneficial Association Agreement with the EU. This facilitates trade between the two parties and gives Israeli products a competitive advantage on the European market.

Trade policy is the key to persuading Israel, unanimously voted into the economic cooperation organization OECD more than a year ago, to respect international law, as Europe is the country’s most important market. A hard line can create the necessary political space to achieve the necessary change in Israeli policy. If the expansion of the settlements becomes too costly, this will cease.

Settler Watch demands that the EU stop rewarding Israel for its policy. All economic cooperation must be conditional and linked to Israel respecting human rights and international law. The message must be clear: Israel’s colonisation of the occupied territories cannot be tolerated, and it must cease at once. If Israel continues to construct settlements the Association Agreement will be suspended.

The EU has played a large part in allowing the settlements to grow as large as they have. It is high time that the leaders of the countries of the EU sow a seed of hope for a peaceful resolution to the conflict and now bear the responsibility for combating the settlements. Tomorrow may be too late.