Secret EU plan for future Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria revealed; outraged Israeli politicians fire back.
By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News
A leaked excerpt of the European Union’s plan for reinforcing the Palestinians’ claims to land in Judea and Samaria and to prevent Israeli archaeologists from excavating Jewish heritage sites in the region roiled Israeli politicians on Thursday, with 40 MKs sending a scathing letter to the EU president over the matter.
A Hebrew-language Channel 13 news report earlier this week revealed the EU’s plan for Area A, a portion of Judea and Samaria which is meant to be solely administered by the Palestinian Authority, per the 1993 Oslo Accords agreements.
“The European Union is committed to contribute to building a Palestinian State within 1967 borders and mobilize to this purpose its political and financial tools,” reads the document, which was classified as secret by the EU.
Among the actions the EU pledged to undertake in the confidential plan are the “planning and mapping of [Palestinian] land rights,” legal support to Palestinians attempting to assert their ownership of land in Israeli courts, and “monitoring” Israeli archaeological excavations in Judea and Samaria.
Archaeological digs in the region often turn up the residences of Biblical kings, ancient synagogues and ritual baths, and other evidence of thousands of years of Jewish heritage in Judea and Samaria.
The EU’s priority to attempt to prevent Israeli archaeologists from working in the area seems to suggest that they fear the further discovery of heritage sites that tie the Jewish people to the land.
According to the Channel 13 report, the EU document concludes by stating that its ultimate goal is to see the PA-controlled Area A be combined with Area B and Area C, which are under partial and full Israeli administration respectively, in order to create a future Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria.
EU’s ‘primitive hatred’ of Jews
Forty MKs from the Likud, Religious Zionism, Shas, and United Torah Judaism parties signed an open letter to EU president Roberta Mescola, saying that the plan revealed an inherent anti-Israel bias within the body.
The plan’s intention is to “subvert the deep and indestructible bond between the Jewish people and its country and homeland,” the letter reads.
“Your efforts to expedite the Palestinian Authority’s seizure of Area C, while trampling underfoot the universal principles of environmental protection and preservation of archaeological sites, constitute an extremely grave breach of the relationship between Israel and the European Union, causing irreplaceable damage to natural and archaeological treasures throughout Judea and Samaria,” the letter continued.
“We were apparently mistaken in thinking that racist, religious hatred of Jews and Israel was a thing of the past. It saddens us to discover time and time again that under the thin veneer of the EU’s civility and manners and the seeming concern for human rights, the same old blood libels can be found, along with the same flames of primitive hatred that seek this time to persecute—not the individual Jew, but the tiny Jewish state.”
A group of former IDF senior officials slammed the EU in their own letter, calling the Area C development plan a “threat to national security.”
“It is not by chance that the European Union chose to classify the document as secret since it reveals its antisemitic attitude towards Israel for all to see,” Religious Zionism Party Chairman Bezalel Smotrich wrote on Twitter.
“It’s not content with accelerating the Palestinian takeover of Area C, it is important for it to thwart Israeli archaeological activity in Judea and Samaria lest the truth be revealed: ‘We have not taken foreign land, nor foreign property of our own; but the land of our ancestors.’”