On January 30, representatives of the European Union and several other countries, including Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Ireland, Spain and Sweden, visited the Palestinian community of Khan al-Ahmar in the West Bank “to express their concern at the threat of demolition facing the village.”
Khan al-Ahmar, home to 38 Palestinian families, was illegally built more than a decade ago as part of the Palestinian Authority’s plan to illegally seize land near Jordan in Area C of the West Bank, which is exclusively controlled by Israel in accordance with the Oslo Accords signed between the Palestinians and the Israeli government.
A few days before the EU officials and diplomats visited the village, the Palestinian terror group Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, demolished dozens of houses on the other side of Israel, near Egypt, in the Gaza Strip, as part of a plan to expand a coastal highway. Some of the homeowners expressed outrage over the Hamas demolitions. One of them described the them as a new catastrophe and a death sentence for scores of families. Another Palestinian denounced the demolitions as a “crime” and said they were “carried out by Hamas under the threat of arms.”
The EU officials and other foreign diplomats — who had come to the Middle East to express solidarity with the residents of the illegal village in the West Bank — did even bother to comment at all on the demolition of the homes Hamas had destroyed. Without question, they would have heard of the demolitions from Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip or through the Palestinian media, but the foreign officials chose to ignore the “new catastrophe” and “crime.”
Why? Their hatred for Israel permits them to give Hamas a pass for the atrocities they commit against their own people, the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, but then to accuse the Israelis of defending what is rightfully theirs.
The plight of the families in the Gaza Strip, like other human rights violations committed by Hamas, are being ignored not only by the EU, but the international community as well. Unfortunately for these families, the bulldozers that destroyed their homes belong to Hamas, not Israel.
One can only imagine the uproar in the international community had Israel sent bulldozers to raze dozens of homes in the Gaza Strip. If those homes been demolished by Israel and not by Hamas, the same EU officials who visited Khan al-Ahmar would have rushed to the Gaza Strip to meet with the distraught families.
What is even more painful and humiliating for the Palestinians, is that EU officials who regularly visit the Gaza Strip intentionally ignore the suffering of the Palestinians living under Hamas.
Instead of working to strengthen the economy after it violently seized the Gaza Strip in 2007, Hamas has since been investing the millions of dollars it receives in building tunnels, and manufacturing and smuggling weapons to attack Israel. As if that were not enough, two years ago Hamas imposed a slew of new taxes on imported goods, sparking rare protests by many Palestinians.
Hamas, in addition to its disproportionately large military budget, also diverts aid money from Europe and the US to fund its military ventures.
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