EU rewards Israel instead of sanctioning it over war crimes, says activist

The European Union would have sanctioned Israel instead of rewarding the regime if it was serious about taking measures to curb the ongoing onslaught in Palestine, an activist tells Press TV.

For decades, the Israeli regime has not been held to account for its crimes under international law, in spite of its daily killings and assassinations of Palestinians, as well as home demolitions, illegal detentions, and desecration of al-Aqsa Mosque.

Human rights activists say the apartheid regime will continue its atrocities as long as the international community turns a blind eye to its crimes.

“The European Union, just like the United States, Canada, Australia, and other imperialist powers, is aligned with the interests of continuing to perpetuate the Zionist occupation in Palestine and providing a military base for imperialism in the region,” Charlotte Kates, an international coordinator for the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, told Press TV on Monday.

She said if the EU was “serious about actually taking action to put a break on this ongoing onslaught of war crimes and crimes against humanity, extrajudicial killings, mass imprisonment, not to mention the installation of the openly fascist government in the Zionist regime, they would have imposed sanctions on the Israeli occupation regime.”

She criticized the EU for “rewarding Israel with access to funds” through agreements for trade, while the bloc does not hesitate to impose sanctions on people and countries around the world who are simply defending their own right to self-determination and independence.

By backing Israel, the EU has set itself up as a “full partner” in crimes of the occupation against the Palestinian people, she said.

However, she said, the EU actions do not reflect the views of the population in Europe, and the disconnect leads to a growing level of activism and mobilization to demand the boycott and isolation of Israel and especially among young Palestinians in the diaspora.

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‘Ongoing Nekba’

Elsewhere in her remarks, she pointed to the Israeli regime’s indiscriminate killings of Palestinians in the West Bank, saying such killings are not “isolated, one-off incidents.”

“These are part and parcel of Zionist policy, and they have been for 75 years; it is nothing new in many ways, these are not just isolated incidents that happened separately from one another, but are part of a process of an ongoing Nakba,” she said, making a reference to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948.

She added that “there is an imperialist war on the Palestinian people and a settler colonial project that is built on attempting to take more Palestinian land and displace more and Palestinian people, and all of these crimes are part of the Zionist project itself, not a deviation from it.”

‘Resistance poses major challenge to Zionist control of Palestine’

It is actually the Palestinian resistance that is changing the balance of power and posing a real challenge to Zionist control of Palestine and to the Israeli occupation, Kates said of the recent UN General Assembly resolution.

The above-mentioned resolution is seeking the opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the legal consequences of Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories.

While it can be worthwhile to fight in the courts, Kates said, these kinds of purely legal mechanisms that are simply based on standard tenets of international law are viewed as completely unacceptable forms of resistance.

“There is no alternative for the Palestinian people but to resist by all means that are necessary and available to them,” she added.

“It is only natural that Palestinians will continue to create and evolve organizations that are engaged in resistance to build a united resistance front, bringing together those that are engaged in resistance from different political trends,” she said.

“What we are seeing is an ongoing popular uprising that is in many ways becoming more and more comprehensive,” she concluded.

ICJ to examine legal implications of continued Israeli occupation: Palestine’s UN envoy

The Palestinian ambassador to the UN says the International Court of Justice will examine the legal implications of the continued Israeli occupation of Palestine.

On Sunday, a report issued by the Palestine Center for Prisoners’ Studies (PCPS) said that Israeli forces arrested a total of 7,000 Palestinians, including hundreds of women and children last year.

Moreover, a Saturday report by the Middle East Eye news and analysis website revealed that 2022 has been the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank and the Tel Aviv-blockaded Gaza Strip since the Second Palestinian Intifada (Uprising) which ended in 2005.

More than 220 Palestinians were killed at the hands of Israeli forces throughout the year, the MEE reported, adding that 167 of the victims were shot dead in the West Bank and 53 others in Gaza. The fatalities included 48 children, the report said.

Analysts interpret the heightened Israeli brutality as a means of forcibly expelling Palestinians from their lands and making way for expansion of illegal Jewish-only settlements.

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