On Sunday, February 23, Israel deployed tanks in the West Bank occupied for the first time in more than two decades. It was the last of a series of bellicose waterfalls which degenerated in January, in tandem with the implementation of the tenuous ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip.
Of course, the intrinsically long-term nature of the genocidal policy of Israel in Gaza means that any ceasefire is inevitably temporary. During the 15 -month assault on the Palestinian enclave which started in October 2023, the Israeli army officially killed at least 48,365 Palestinians, the majority of women and children – although the real number of deaths is undoubtedly much higher. Most of the residents of Gaza have been moved by the Israeli assault, many of them more than once.
Now, the Times of Israel reports that more than 40,100 Palestinians in Cisjordan refugee camps as Jenin have “fled their houses” since January 21, which is “the greatest movement of the territory since the six -day war in 1967”. And on Sunday, the Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz asked the army to prepare for a “prolonged presence in the camps released for next year, and not to authorize the return of residents”.
Anyway, there is nothing like ethnic cleaning to open the way to annexation, the main fantasy of the Israeli right wing. The completely illegal program could also soon receive an explicit approval from the American president Donald Trump, who pointed out in early February: “People love the idea, but we have not yet taken a stand on this subject.”
Monday – One day after the deployment of Israel of the West Bank in the West Bank and in the announcement of ethnic cleaning of Katz – the European Union and Israel held the 13th meeting in Brussels of the Council of the EU -Israel Association, assisted by the representatives of the 27 EU states and co -president by the Minister of Israeli Affairs Gideon Sa’ar.
In theory, Reunion would have been an opportunity timely to call Israel on mass forced displacement and continuous slaughter in the West Bank – not to mention, you know, the genocide in Gaza. Three days before the Brussels meeting, Israeli forces fatally killed two Palestinian children at the back near Jenin and Hébron, respectively.
Article 2 of the Association of the EU-Israel association specifies that “relations between the parties, as well as all the provisions of the agreement itself, are based on respect for human rights and democratic principles.” And it was this article which was invoked in February 2024 by the leaders of Spain and Ireland, who called for an examination of the question of whether Israel raped the obligations of human rights of the agreement.
But at the meeting on Monday with Sa’ar, it was clear that the EU – Israel’s largest trading partner – was more concerned with preserving his association with a country guilty of all kinds of war crimes and crimes against humanity. In the official “note” of pre-reunion concerning the position of the EU, the General Secretariat of the Council of the EU-Israel Association began by stressing that “the EU attaches great importance to its close relations with the State of Israel”.
Much more kisses from the back of Israel follows throughout the rest of the 28 -page PDF document, with the EU alternately expressing “all its solidarity and support for Israel and its people” and the identification of Israel as a “key partner of cooperation” in many areas. The note underlines how the EU “impatiently awaits” to work with Israel to “take up global challenges” as well as “accelerate the passage of the world to a secure and just food system” – a fairly rich task to attribute to people who used only famine as a weapon of war to Gaza.
This does not mean that Europeans did not succeed in a single criticism of Israel in 28 pages. The note takes care to mention that “the EU deeply deplores the unacceptable number of civilians, in particular women and children, who have lost their lives” in Gaza; that “the EU recalls that the annexation is illegal under international law”; And that “the EU remains seriously concerned about the in -depth appeal by Israel to blind arrests and administrative detention without official costs.” But any substantial conviction is ultimately drowned by the fact that Europe is so delighted to cooperate with Israel, now and forever.
The declaration also informs us that “the EU seriously fears that the occupation of the Palestinian territory which began in 1967 continues to date” and repeatedly reiterates the support of a two -state solution. And yet, it is anyone who guesses how, exactly, the end of the occupation is supposed to occur, when the state which does not only the occupation but also the effort to disappear the Palestinian people is praised as a brilliant regional partner.
Addressing journalists in Brussels, the Israeli Minister for Foreign Affairs, Sa’ar, defended the current Israel campaign for forced travel in the West Bank, which led to a murder generalized by the army and the illegal settlers as well as the demolition of the house: “These are military operations that take place against the terrorists, and no other objective than.”
Admittedly, the good former anti-terrorist excuse never fails to justify the perpetual terrorization of Israel of the Palestinians. At the start of Israel’s escalation in the West Bank in January, the Minister of Defense, Katz, also trotted the word T to explain how Israel now applied “the first lesson in the Repeated Raid method in Gaza” by submitting Jenin to “a powerful operation to eliminate terrorists and terrorist infrastructure in the camp, guaranteeing that terrorism does not come back to camp after the operation ”.
Indeed, Israel’s operations in the West Bank are only an extension of the genocidal approach to Gaza, with the slaughter and mass movement that have been transpired with a complete complicity of the United States and Europe – less the intermittent lip service paid to Palestinian rights.
It remains to be seen if Trump will now offer a “Dead Sea Riviera” in the West Bank to compete with his vision of the “Riviera du Middle East”, which will not spring the ruins of the Gaza Strip once the United States has torn off the territory and expel the native population.
In the meantime, the crimes of Israel against humanity will continue to be standardized by the country’s “key cooperation partners” around the world, while the genocide is increasingly relegated to the non-nine-nine field. And it is frankly a crime against humanity itself.
The opinions expressed in this article are the own authors and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.