At the first E.U.-Israel Association Council meeting in a decade, the European Union urged Israel to stop building “settlements” – towns where Jews have permission to live – in Judea and Samaria, and to “preserve the status quo on the Temple Mount” – which means preventing Jews from praying there.
The Council meeting, which took place in Brussels, was held to improve ties between Israel and the E.U and saw the participation of the E.U.’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell and the foreign ministers of several European countries.
The Cypriot defense minister and the Irish minister for European affairs participated, while Israel’s Intelligence Minister Elazar Stern represented the Jewish state in person and Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid addressed the meeting virtually.
“The E.U. calls on Israel to halt continued settlement expansion, which has reached record highs in the past years, evictions, demolitions and forced transfers,” the E.U. said, with a specific request that Israel not move forward with new construction in the city of Ma’ale Adumim just kilometers east of Jerusalem, and to abstain from evicting illegal Arab villagers in the Masafer Yatta region in the South Hebron Hills. Ma’ale Adumim is a bustling, modern Israeli city, home to about 40,000 people.
Like most of the international community, the E.U. advocates for a “two-state solution” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, about which former White House Advisor Jared Kushner in 2019 said, “If you say ’two-state’, it means one thing to the Israelis, it means one thing to the Palestinians.”
The Europeans view the growth of Jewish communities beyond the so-called “green line” in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria to be an obstacle to the implementation of the two-state solution. However, by rejecting the presence of Jewish civilians in disputed territory once occupied by Jordan, the E.U. seemingly supports an outcome for the area similar to that which occurred in Gaza upon Israel’s extraction from the Strip in 2005 – an absence of Jews.
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