Attack on EU for building 'Palestinian settlements'
This posting has these items:
1) Ynet: Illegal Palestinian city being built south of Hebron, sounds like more of Regavim’s propaganda;
2) FT: Calls for halt to West Bank demolitions, John Reed does his usual thorough job;
3) Haaretz: Israel Dramatically Ramping Up Demolitions of Palestinian Homes in West Bank, Amira Hass tells it like it is;
4) Mail Online: EXCLUSIVE: Outrage as EU claims diplomatic immunity after using OUR aid money to ‘meddle in the Middle East’ by building on disputed West Bank land, the Mail uses Regavim’s ‘facts’ as new arguments for its anti-EU campaign;
One of Regavim’s photos of illegal Palestinian structures south of Hebron.
Illegal Palestinian city being built south of Hebron
Palestinians are building a new city south of Hebron with no permits or central planning, claim members of NGO Regavim. MK Motti Yogev: Lots of money is being invested in financing illegal Palestinian buildings in strategic areas.
By Elisha Ben Kimon, Ynet
April 06, 2016
A new Palestinian city is being built “illegally, with no permits, and under the noses of the Civil Administration” a spokesperson for NGO Regavim said Wednesday.
Oved Arad, head of the Regavim field division, raised this issue during a meeting of the Subcommittee for Foreign and Security Affairs for Judea and Samaria. According to their report, the illegal village is being built on ten thousand dunams of land south of Hebron.
The area where the building is taking place is called “live fire zone 917.” In the 1980s, there were three areas set up by the Civil Administration designated to settle the Bedouin close to live fire zone 917, but the population has grown at such an exponential rate since then that the three areas have since merged into one continuous urban development the size of a city.
Regavim claims to have reported these illegal construction activities several times to the Civil Administration and was told that orders were being carried out to stop this illegal construction. However, construction continued, with houses, schools, medical clinics, and mosques being built at an alarming rate.
“The Civil Administration is rewarding these Palestinian lawbreakers under the noses of the Israeli public,” Oved Arad claimed.
“The Administration is permitting the illegal construction of an entire city, a city which has no central planning, and is completely illegal. This is a scandal which requires further examination,” Arad concluded.
Council Chairman MK Moti Yogev said that “we must consider the construction of the Palestinians in Area C. We can’t let the EU act here as if this is their territory. There are many countries who donate aid, and lots of money is being invested in financing illegal Palestinian buildings in strategic areas.”
These claims were rejected by Gen. Yoav Mordechai, head of the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories unit (COGAT). He claims that the situation is the exact opposite of the claims made by Regavim.
“Incomplete quotes have emerged from my discussions with the council, quotes which make it seem as if there is a discriminatory and lenient policy in regards to the Palestinians. I want to make it clear – there is strict enforcement (of the law) vis-à-vis the Palestinians.”
Gen. Mordechai went on to state that “enforcement is inclined to be stricter on the Palestinian side that it is on the Israeli side. We have to look at the big picture, and not only look at the administration and how it enforces its policies. There has been a freeze in Palestinian planning (of new cities- ed) for the past two years, and no new building permits have been issued.”
The residents also complained about the destruction of a synagogue in Karmei Tzur last week, although the general said that “data regarding the enforcement of policies against the Palestinians is not available to the public due to international policy. To claim that there’s one form of enforcement against Palestinians and one against Jews is a baseless argument.”
The Civil Administration said in response that “these are clusters of buildings in three areas which were planned by the Civil Administration in the 1980’s. The areas were designed to respond to the needs of Bedouin population and the residents of the area over the course of several decades. The construction has been concentrated in these areas for the last 30 years. There have been several instances where the Bedouins violated the agreements, and all the necessary demolition and confiscation orders were made and undertaken.”
Calls for halt to West Bank demolitions
John Reed, FT
February 25, 2016
Rami Hamdallah, the Palestinian prime minister, has called for international intervention to stop a wave of Israeli demolitions and seizures of buildings in the West Bank, among them structures funded by European donors.
The confrontation comes against the backdrop of rising tensions between Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and the EU over Israel’s illegal settlements, including remarks by David Cameron, the UK prime minister, who on Wednesday called settlement building in occupied East Jerusalem “genuinely shocking”.
Mr Netanyahu hit back angrily on Thursday evening, saying that Mr Cameron “probably forgot some basic facts about Jerusalem”.
“Only Israeli sovereignty is preventing Isis and Hamas from setting fire to the holy places in the city, like they do elsewhere across the Middle East”, the Israeli leader told members of his Likud party in the southern city of Ofakim.
The remains of a house in Dier Samit demolished by the IDF. Photo by EPA
Many of the structures hit in the Israeli demolition served impoverished Palestinian Bedouin communities, and included shacks and latrines built by residents as well as structures funded by the EU or bilateral aid organisations.
“Israel must be held accountable for its deliberate targeting of EU-funded humanitarian aid structures built for the Bedouin communities in Area C,” Mr Hamdallah said on Thursday, referring to the area of the occupied West Bank under full Israeli civilian and military control.
Mr Hamdallah’s call comes a day after EU’s missions in Jerusalem and Ramallah attacked what they called “an unprecedented number of demolitions and confiscations” of Palestinian buildings.
Human rights groups and the UN say the pace of the demolitions since January has been higher than seen in recent years. According to the Palestinians and the EU, more than 480 people have lost their homes this year as a result.
The buildings affected are in the Israeli-occupied Jordan Valley, the hills south of the Palestinian city of Hebron, and in E1, a patch of land east of Jerusalem where the US and European countries have warned Israel not to expand its illegal settlements for fear that it would compromise chances of creating a viable future Palestinian state.
Israeli authorities on Sunday confiscated a newly built, French-funded school for Bedouin in Abu Nwar, near Jerusalem, along with its contents. Israel, which aims to move Bedouin into planned towns, said it was only upholding the law by tearing down structures built without permits.
The Co-ordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, a unit of the Israeli defence ministry responsible for ties with foreign diplomats and the Palestinian Authority, told the Financial Times that the EU-funded buildings were being destroyed because the body “takes enforcement measures against any sort of illegal construction in Area C”.
However, Mr Hamdallah said he thought the demolitions were retaliation for the EU’s recent adoption of guidelines on labelling products grown in Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank.
The move infuriated Mr Netanyahu’s government, which briefly suspended contacts with EU diplomats on the peace process, but eased the stance after meeting with EU foreign policy chief Frederica Mogherini earlier this month.
Some European diplomats in the region believe Israel may be preparing to begin building an illegal settlement in E1, which lies between occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim.
“The whole thing fits in with what they want to do with E1,” said a European diplomat who declined to be named. “The fact that they are now so explicitly in our face has to do with the [labelling] guidelines and the pique they feel over that.”
However, others said the move to demolish EU-funded structures had more to do with domestic political considerations. Mr Netanyahu is under pressure from the far-right Jewish Home party, who are part his coalition government, to advance settlers’ interests.
Israel Dramatically Ramping Up Demolitions of Palestinian Homes in West Bank
Israel has razed over 200 EU-funded buildings in the West Bank in the past two years. This year alone around 480 people, including 220 children, have been left homeless.
Amira Hass, Haaretz
February 21, 2016
Since the beginning of this year, especially in early February, Israel’s Civil Administration has significantly increased the pace of Palestinian home demolitions in the West Bank’s Area C under full Israeli control (about 60 percent of the West Bank).
It has demolished 293 homes in just six weeks, compared with 447 for all of 2015. The average has surged to 49 from nine per week. The demolitions have left more than 480 Palestinians, including 220 children, homeless.
At the settlement subcommittee of the Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, headed by Moti Yogev (Habayit Hayehudi), MKs have openly pressured Civil Administration officials to step up the demolitions and evict Palestinian communities from Area C.
Over the years, they have accused the administration of being powerless or deliberate foot dragging. They have especially complained about European aid to Palestinian construction in these areas, and demanded that the authorities destroy buildings that international organizations, particularly European ones, have donated.
At a closed session of the subcommittee in August, the head of the Coordinator for Government Activities in the Territories, Gen. Yoav Mordechai, said he had discussed the matter in April in a meeting attended by Justice Ministry and National Security Council representatives, among others. That month, COGAT issued rules for addressing illegal construction involving international organizations.
Mordechai said all illegal building involving European funding would receive an immediate order, and he would immediately send a letter to the embassy of the donor country protesting “that they are building illegally,” according to minutes of the meeting obtained by Haaretz.
Mordechai said he had held 30 meetings with international representatives between January and August 2015 in which the issue had arisen.
“In the last meeting with the EU ambassador, [I told him] that there are statutory processes and we would be happy to approve them in the planning process,” Mordechai said. “Thus legally sanctioned steps would be taken against any illegal construction and aid done without coordination, and that’s how we’re operating.”
The simple modular shelters provided by the EU; smaller modules provide sanitary facilities.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Israel has destroyed almost as many European-funded structures in 2016 (104) as it did in all of 2015 (108). The buildings are mostly for hygiene, agriculture, solar panels and prefab living quarters. One European organization calculated that the demolition rate had increased 230 percent over last year, and 689 percent for European-funded buildings.
On February 9 alone, the Civil Administration demolished no fewer than 15 European-funded structures in Khirbet Tana, including two tents where 13 people lived, three outhouses, two water tanks and eight sheep pens.
The Israeli force raided the village at around 8 A.M. and left at around noon. It included two yellow bulldozers, one white Civil Administration truck and military jeeps. A female soldier guarded the women and children. Another soldier watched the men while 15 Civil Administration employees emptied the structures of their contents before the demolitions.
Khirbet Tana is a village of cave-dwelling shepherds and farmers originally from the village of Beit Furik southeast of Nablus. Ancient wells, well-kept residential caves and a stone mosque with a curved ceiling show that this settlement, located near two springs and spreading out across the slopes of several hills with wadis in between, has existed for over 100 years.
“My mother gave birth to me in this cave in 1936,” Radwan Qassem told Haaretz. “I’m older than the State of Israel, and it does not allow me to live here.”
‘I’ll come back and demolish’
In 2011, the Civil Administration demolished a two-room concrete house with a balcony Qassem had built outside the cave, which the family had outgrown. Later, it demolished the tent the family had put up in place of the house.
The family returned and built another tent, which was demolished this month. It was their fifth Israeli demolition, says Qassem while lying inside the cave on a mat. The cave has all the possessions the family was able to snatch from the tent before it was demolished, including mattresses, kerosene burners, gas tanks, a small cupboard and a cooler. The Israelis also destroyed the pen.
“We sat and watched how they demolished the tent and pen,” says Afaf, Radwan’s wife. “And what could we do? I cried because of this horrible scene.”
Their neighbour, Jawaher Nasasreh, recalls that soldiers came to her family tent before the bulldozers arrived, “and they started cutting up the canvas with their knives,” while she wrapped slices of cheese in cloth and laid a metal tray on them, and then put two concrete bricks on top of that. She said the demolishing force spilled the water out of all their water containers.
“In other places they only knocked down the tent,” she says. “With us, they really destroyed things, maybe because my husband argued with them. My husband told the soldier: ‘I’ll come back and rebuild.’ And the soldier told him: ‘I’ll come back and demolish.”
The demolitions racked six families and 23 structures including a junk truck serving as a storage room and an outdoor oven in the cave.
After Khirbet Tana, Civil Administration inspectors and the army spent two full days demolishing structures in another eight Palestinian communities in the Jordan Valley: Khirbet Ein Karzaliyah, al-Mukasar, Fasail, al-Misfah, Abu al-Ajaj, Khalet Khader, Bardale and Ein al-Beida.
The Israelis destroyed tents people were living in, huts, pens, herd enclosures, an access road (which makes it very hard to deliver humanitarian aid to the families), a two-kilometer pipe meant to provide water to 50 families in the area, storage facilities and a dairy. Some of the tents and the pipe were donated by international organizations. Fifty-nine people, including 28 minors, were left without a roof over their heads, B’Tselem reported.
An EU-funded shelter in Fasayl, Jordan Valley, demolished February 11, 2016. Photo by Activestills.org
After this demolition wave, Robert Piper, the UN Coordinator for Humanitarian Assistance and Development Aid for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said: “Most of the demolitions in the West Bank take place on the spurious legal grounds that Palestinians do not possess building permits, but, in Area C, official Israeli figures indicate only 1.5 percent of Palestinian permit applications are approved in any case. So what legal options are left for a law-abiding Palestinian?”
Younes Qassem, 7, of the Bedouin community Zawahreh in Ein Rashash, came home early from school in Kafr Duma on Tuesday. He saw the bulldozers and hordes of jeeps, the soldiers (Border Police according to one source) and the workers raiding the tents.
He told Haaretz he was afraid, even though his family’s tent had not been demolished. It was the first demolition of this community, which lives (with permission) on land owned privately by village residents in the area, east of the village Mughayer and the Alon Highway.
Forty-three structures in two hours
This community is originally from the Negev; it was expelled after 1948 war. The people settled in the southern West Bank and in the 1990s migrated north.
On Tuesday, a few hours after the force that demolished the Bedouin’s structures left, the women and children were still meandering among the mattresses, blankets, food sacks and animal feed that rolled around in piles among the rocks. Shreds of plastic, the canvas and iron rods from which the tents were built, were lying on the ground next to water tanks and an overturned water trough.
Similar to testimonies from Khirbet Tana, the women talked about an armed female soldier who kept watch over them and the children, and an armed soldier who watched the men as workers threw the contents of their tents on the rocks. Meanwhile, bulldozers leveled the huts and tents.
In some places, Civil Administration workers spilled the sacks of flour, salt and sugar on the ground. Forty-three structures were demolished within two hours, among them 10 residences, 25 pens and eight outdoor kitchens. Almost 60 people, among them 38 children, lost their shelter.
The villagers of Khirbet Tana and the Bedouin of Ein Rashash make a living as shepherds and from selling cheese and meat. The first concern in both communities after the demolition was rebuilding the sheep pens and returning immediately to shepherding. The two areas attract many Israeli hikers, among them settlers.
“When their vehicle gets stuck on the way to the Ein Rashash spring, we rescue them,” a community member said. “We use a tractor to pull their stuck vehicle.”
The hikers visit regularly even though the Israel Defense Forces declared the two areas, in which these two communities live, a closed military zone. Members of the two communities say that if there are training exercises, they only take place in a small part of the area.
Khirbet Tana is located in an area that was declared Closed Military Zone 904a, which covers 42,500 dunams (10,500 acres). The army trains on less than 8,000 dunams of that zone, about 19 percent. It trains often in some parts, rarely in others.
The Zawahreh community lies in Closed Military Zone 906, whose size is 88,000 dunams. The army regularly uses about 2,600 dunams of that area (2.9 percent) and sometimes uses about 9,400 dunams (10.6 percent), based on calculations by researcher Dror Etkes in his report “A Locked Garden” for the NGO Kerem Navot.
Zone 906 includes around 8,000 dunams of land registered as privately owned by local villagers. Declaring the area a closed military zone prevented Palestinian farmers from working their land, which became gradually became barren and therefore served as pasture for the Bedouin families. The Zawahreh tent is on this private land, on the edges of the firing zone. The community moves to a tent camp outside the firing zone every summer.
Attorney Shlomo Lecker represented the Zawahreh community in a case against the Civil Administration in the High Court of Justice. The state rescinded the evacuation orders it had issued in 2010 (in response to Lecker’s case that the residents were permanent residents inside a closed military zone), and replaced them with demolition orders sent to the residents last November.
In the name of the residents, Lecker petitioned the Civil Administration on December 1 to wait five months until the community moved to the tent camp outside the firing zone. According to the residents, they could pay for the costly move after the winter and spring seasons when they sell most of their cheese products. The demolition on Tuesday was the response.
Radwan Qassem of Khirbet Tana recounts the history of run-ins with his village.
“In 1967 the Jews shot our sheep,” he recalls. “In 1971 they took the shepherds in a helicopter to Jericho and we paid a ransom for them to be released. In 1973 they took the sheep to Jericho, and we paid to redeem them. And then came the demolitions.”
The demolitions were conducted in the 1990s during the Oslo peace process and the spread of illegal Jewish outposts. In 2011 the army and Civil Administration demolished 12 ancient caves. A petition to the High Court of Justice stopped the cave demolitions. The judges proposed that the sides reach a compromise. The state demanded that the residents evacuate their homes and land and receive entry permits into the area for agriculture and shepherding, but without sleeping there overnight.
The residents refused, attorney Tawfeeq Jabareen, who submitted the petition, told Haaretz. He said the judges weren’t impressed by his explanations that the community and its way of life, which depends on pastures, preceded the establishment of the state and the declaration of firing zones. The judges were only excited by the information he provided about outposts of the settlement of Itamar, which are also in the firing zone.
The state said it had evacuated an outpost known as the “Itamar Cohen compound” (which came back with a new building), and claimed that other outposts, especially the one known as Hill 777 or Arnon Hill which was established in 1998 and in which permanent structures are built on the edges of the firing zone and on top of a hill. So they had less of an effect on the training exercises.
According to the testimony of a resident of another Palestinian village in the area, recorded in “A Locked Garden,” the army stopped training in the areas under the outposts’ control and moved to other areas in the firing zone to train. Because of the outposts, the Palestinians cannot return to work their land.
In the state’s response to Jabareen’s petition, the attorney general’s office stated that “the exercise training areas are the land resource for building security forces and especially building the IDF… With the development of more advanced weapons and larger firing ranges arises the need for areas that continue to grow, both in Israel and in the West Bank. Land is a resource in short supply.”
It said that “notwithstanding the security threats to Israel and the Judea and Samaria region… expansive areas were required for the purpose of training army units.”
And thus, justices Elyakim Rubinstein, Salim Joubran and Uzi Vogelman rejected the petition in November, and the residents knew they had to prepare for the impending demolition.
The Civil Administration said that based on its authority, it “carries out enforcement against illegal structures in line with priorities and operational considerations.” It did not respond to the question of whether the surge in demolitions, especially of European-funded structures, stemmed from pressure by the Knesset subcommittee. Nor did it respond to a request to provide its data on the demolitions.
EXCLUSIVE: Outrage as EU claims diplomatic immunity after using OUR aid money to ‘meddle in the Middle East’ by building on disputed West Bank land
The EU has built more than 1,000 buildings on the West Bank without planning permission, as well as roads and other infrastructure
They are at 40 locations in Area C, which was placed under Israeli jurisdiction by international law
The buildings are given to Palestinians and paid for using aid money from European countries, including Britain
Regavim, an Israeli NGO, launched legal action against the EU
But the EU is claiming diplomatic immunity to avoid being taken to court, MailOnline has learnt
MPs have expressed their fury, branding the EU’s actions ‘dodgy’
An EU spokesperson said its actions were illegal [sic] because they were ‘humanitarian’
By Jake Wallis Simons, Mail Online
March 15, 2016
The EU is claiming diplomatic immunity after using taxpayers’ money to build unauthorised settlements and roads on Israeli parts of the West Bank, MailOnline can reveal.
An Israeli NGO launched legal action after photographing EU flags flying above buildings on land placed under Israeli jurisdiction by the Oslo Accords, to which the EU is a signatory. EU bureaucrats are avoiding court by citing diplomatic rules.
The buildings, which are given to Palestinians, are intended to ‘pave the way’ for more land to be brought under Palestinian control, according to official EU papers. Many are bulldozed by Israel only for the EU to repeatedly rebuild them, generating more costs for the taxpayer.
Leaked documents obtained by MailOnline show that the EU – which receives £350million per week from Britain – is using diplomatic rules to place officials above the law, foiling attempts to hold bureaucrats accountable.
MPs have expressed outrage that the EU is using aid money to ‘meddle’ in a foreign territorial dispute, and branded its actions ‘dodgy’.
‘It is deeply concerning that the EU falls back on diplomatic immunity after breaking planning regulations,’ Jacob Rees-Mogg MP told MailOnline. ‘The UK Government would take a very dim view of a friendly state doing that to us.
‘Diplomatic immunity is there to protect envoys from unjust treatment, not to protect the high-handed behaviour of arrogant bureaucracies.’
He added: ‘The EU maintains that it is based on fundamental principles of rule of law and support for democracy. But when this clashes with its bureaucratic bungling, neither rule of law nor democracy seem important.’
The projects come at a cost of tens of millions of Euros in aid money, a proportion of which comes from the British taxpayer. Construction is also funded by international charities, including Oxfam.
EU flags are mounted on the buildings, leading them to become known locally as the ‘EU settlements’.’The EU should comply with the law. It should not be meddling in the Middle East, then hiding behind some dodgy use of diplomatic immunity,’ Andrew Percy MP told MailOnline.
‘This is a gross waste of taxpayers’ money. It’s another example of money given to the EU over which Parliament has no real oversight.
‘The British electorate is contributing to this but we are completely unaware of how it’s being spent. We don’t know who is spending this, and we can’t vote them out.’
He added: ‘No wonder the EU think they’re above the law. They are untouchable.’
Mr Percy also expressed serious concerns that the EU is ‘undermining the Oslo Accords’ and ‘damaging attempts at peace’ in the Middle East. ‘Not only is it a waste of taxpayers’ money, it is morally questionable,’ he said.
This month, the EU approved a further £193million of aid to the Palestinian Authority.
Professor Eugene Kontorovich, an international lawyer from the Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago, said: ‘There’s no question, the EU is openly in violation of international law.’
But an EU spokeswoman argued that the construction was legal ‘in accordance with the humanitarian imperative’, and said the EU believed that Area C would be ‘part of any viable future Palestinian state’.’All EU activity in the West Bank is fully in line with international humanitarian law,’ the spokeswoman said. ‘Under international law Israel also has the obligation to protect and facilitate development for the local population, and to grant unimpeded access for humanitarian assistance.’
She would not say whether or not the EU’s actions breached the Oslo Accords.
The Oslo Accords are a series of agreements between Israel and the Palestinians, made in the Nineties, which divided the West Bank into Areas A, B and C.
Area C was placed under Israeli control, while Areas A and B were Palestinian. The agreements were ratified by the international community, including the EU, and intended as a step towards the two-state solution.
More than 1,000 EU-funded Palestinian homes, as well as roads and other infrastructure, have been erected in the Israeli Area C of the West Bank, without permits from Israel.
But the EU says that international humanitarian legislation, coupled with their belief that Area C will end up in Palestinian hands, allows them to proceed with construction.
Regavim, a right-wing Israeli NGO, has brought a number of law suits against the EU, accusing it of undermining international agreements. On each occasion, the EU avoided court by claiming diplomatic immunity, MailOnline has learnt.
The NGO has questioned whether diplomatic immunity should be applied in this case, as Article 41 of the Vienna Convention states that in return for immunity, diplomats must not ‘interfere in the internal affairs of that State’.
A Brussels-based EU spokesperson said: ‘Any attempt by local courts to serve or deliver judicial acts to EU Delegations in third countries… may violate the EU’s immunity from jurisdiction.’
In recent months, Israel has demolished some of the unauthorised EU buildings, leading to a game of cat-and-mouse and a further waste of aid money. Local witnesses say that earlier this month, the EU constructed a rudimentary school on a Friday, and Israel bulldozed it on Saturday.
In another example of wastage, the EU funded the development of an unauthorised road that bisects Area C from east to west. It was originally a dirt path, but last year the EU widened it with heavy equipment.
Israeli authorities halted the construction in October, before asphalt was laid, and work has been sporadic since. EU-funded drainage and irrigation continues in the area, preparing the ground for future Palestinian settlement.
‘It is the most outrageous waste of our aid money at a time when many countries are looking to make difficult savings at home,’ Andrew Percy MP said.
Speaking to the foreign media, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, said: ‘When we take down these illegal constructions, we are then again condemned, so it’s a Catch-22… This is a clear attempt to create political realities… I think we need to re-set our relationship with the EU.’
Relations between Israel and the EU are already strained after the EU issued guidelines that goods produced in the occupied territories should be labelled as such.
Tzipy Hotovely, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister, told Israel’s parliament that although Israel was keen to strengthen ties with Europe, it could not overlook actions that undermine its sovereignty.
‘Improved relations between the EU and Israel will not come at the expense of enforcing the law in Area C,’ she said. ‘The government of Israel has no intention of giving a green light to the building of illegal structures in a political effort to decide the borders of Israel.’
Tzipy Hotovely, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister
The ‘EU Settlements’, can be found in more than 40 locations around the West Bank.
The largest is Wadi Abu Hindi, which is about five miles away from Jerusalem. It is comprised of more than 100 houses, of which about 30 display EU signs.
Another, Khan Al Amar, is located one kilometre north of Highway One, which bisects the West Bank. It is comprised of about 50 houses, all of which displaying EU signs.
A third, Mak-Hul, in the northern West Bank near Nablus, is located on an Israeli military firing range. A fourth is Susia, in the south near Hebron.
Ari Briggs, International Director of Regavim, said: ‘The EU is attempting to establish a de-facto Palestinian State on Israeli territory, with mountains of European taxpayers’ money.
‘They act as if they are above the law and are now attempting to hide behind diplomatic immunity. These actions would not be acceptable anywhere else on Earth, and the EU must be held accountable.’
But other groups disagree. Sarit Michaeli, spokesperson for B’Tselem, the left-wing Israeli human rights group, said:
‘Area C is part of the occupied West Bank, and Israel, the occupying power, is legally obligated to manage the area for the benefit of the Palestinian population.
‘However, it does the exact opposite, and restricts the capacity of Palestinians to develop… Under these circumstances, EU and member state humanitarian assistance is the least the international community can do.’
A ‘Highway’ through the West Bank which, according to Regavim, was constructed without permits using money from the EU
An Oxfam spokesperson said: ‘In recent years, more than 98 percent of Palestinian permit applications for building in Area C of the West Bank have been rejected by the Israeli Government, according to their own statistics.
‘This means many Palestinian communities in Area C, which is under the full control of Israel, are being prevented from building basic, essential structures such as homes and schools.‘Palestinian communities in Area C are some of the poorest in the West Bank. The international community has a responsibility to support vital projects for marginalised communities in Area C, which are legal under international humanitarian law.’
A European Commission spokesman confirmed that Britain – which is the seventh-largest financial contributor to the EU – is likely to have ‘full knowledge’ of any Palestinian settlement project, as aid priorities are agreed by British ministers.
And according to a Dfid spokesman, although Britain is not ‘directly funding’ the Palestinian settlements, the British taxpayer is contributing as a percentage of the ‘core EU budget’.
In 2013, Britain’s gross contribution to the €149.5billion EU budget was about €17.1billion, which amounted to 11.4 percent of the total.