Around 500 former European leaders, diplomats and senior officials of European institutions have called on the European Union to act immediately to stop Israel’s E1 settlement plan in the occupied West Bank. The plan provides for more than 1,200 homes near Jerusalem. The call came in an article published on Monday in the French newspaper Libération.
The Israeli government is expected to award contracts within weeks for the first phase of what the authors called an illegal colonisation plan. On September 27, Israel’s judiciary delayed the opening of tenders for the project by a month, so as not to affect parliamentary elections at the end of October.
The article urged the European Commission to put forward legislative proposals immediately for sanctions on all financial institutions and other service providers involved in E1 and in settlements it described as illegal. It also called for a ban on all EU trade with those settlements.
The signatories also want the trade provisions of the EU’s association agreement with Israel suspended. They said the measures should be adopted when EU foreign ministers meet on October 12.
The authors accused the EU of taking no steps to prevent E1, despite the significant consequences of what they called a new annexation of territory. They also accused it of failing more broadly to meet its treaty obligations to act on breaches of international law. They welcomed action some member states had taken nationally against the settlements. However, they argued that other governments, particularly those of Germany and Italy, continued to systematically block measures at EU level, becoming “de facto complicit in undermining the EU’s values and the two-state solution”.
Signatories include former French prime minister Alain Juppé, former French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin, former Swedish prime minister Stefan Löfven and former European Parliament president Josep Borrell.
E1 had been frozen for decades, notably because of pressure from successive US administrations, until the Israeli government approved it last year. The plan, which has drawn international criticism, would further cut off East Jerusalem, which Israel has occupied and annexed, from the rest of the West Bank.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967. Settlement building has continued ever since and has expanded rapidly in recent years. More than 500,000 Israelis live in settlements there, alongside around three million Palestinians.
