TheAltWorld EU sanctions on settlers is turning a blind eye to colonialism
Some weeks ago, EU Foreign Policy Chief Kaja Kallas commented about the futility of suspending the EU-Israeli Association Agreement, saying it would not stop settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank. The EU has now sanctioned three Israeli settles and four settler organisations. “It was high time we move from deadlock to delivery,” Kallas stated. “Extremisms and violence carry consequences.” Former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban had repeatedly used the veto to block sanctions. However, the EU had repeatedly exhibited its reluctance to stop any part of Israel’s violence. Orban was just one temporary part of the EU’s constructed impunity for Israel. What remains at an institutional and political level carries far more consequences than Orban.
The EU’s feigned concern with settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank will not stop Israel’s colonial expansion. Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir already declared there is no stopping Israel from settling “throughout the entire land of Israel.”
Israel has no borders and Zionism’s concept of Israel is Greater Israel, so there is no other interpretation of Ben Gvir’s words other than complete colonisation. Sanctions, therefore, are a gimmick. Useful for the EU’s diplomacy, useless for Palestinians.
Back to Kallas’s statement that extremism and violence carry consequences. The EU is not matching settler violence with consequences. It is just applying diplomacy to a colonial movement that acts beyond the confines of diplomacy. Extremism and violence carry consequences for Palestinians, and the EU is not intervening to protect Palestinians from settler-colonialism. To do so would unravel its entire relationship with Israel, and the EU will not choose justice over power.
The EU’s double standards on extremism and violence were also applied in the decision to target settlers in the occupied West Bank. If settlers are dangerous, how much more dangerous is a colonial enterprise that committed genocide? The sanctions give the impression that within Israel, three settlers and four settler organisations harbour more violence than Israel’s foundations. The EU is omitting the fact that settlers and settler organisations derive their power from Israel, which constructs itself overtly as the epitome of extremism and violence.
By focusing on Israeli settlers, the EU generates more impunity for the Israeli government. It shifts attention away from the genocide, while reducing the violence in the occupied West Bank to a very limited segment of the settler population. What will the EU’s reaction be when the next report of settler violence return to the media, which is daily? How will the EU argue that it imparted a message against extremism? Of course, it won’t. The EU will revert to the regurgitated statements that settlements are illegal under international law and an obstacle to the two-state alleged solution.
What the Israeli settler movement does in the occupied West Bank can be replicated in Gaza eventually. Gaza has been rendered completely vulnerable by Israel’s genocide. The international community – the EU included – does not prioritise rebuilding Gaza, while Israel’s ongoing encroachment and military occupation in the territory is paving the way for possible eventual Zionist settlement.
Sanctioning settlers without sanctioning Israel is the EU’s way of admitting it will keep turning a blind eye to Israeli colonisation, expansion and genocide.
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