The Israeli government announced the construction of 1200 new housing units in East Jerusalem, benefitting from the silence of the international community, too busy with the U.S. elections (as if the Israeli government feared anyone). Faced with a blind, deaf and especially unscrupulous government, we must fight in continuity, not only when the proposed settlement is announced, to avoid abandonment, normalization of illegality, and the acceptance of the de facto policy, for to the local population life is never normal. And we are all responsible for this tragic situation.
This continual struggle can and should be done in many ways. A report titled “Trading Away Peace: How Europe helps sustain illegal Israeli settlements” written by a group of 20 European NGOs and released last week, shows the responsibility of the European Union in spreading colonies and lists a variety of means to end it.
According to the report, the EU is actively involved in the proliferation of Israeli settlements as the volume of EU imports from the colonies is of 300 million Chf (230 million €) per year which means that Europeans buy 15 times more from Israeli’s illegal settlements than from the Palestinians.