Europe Targets Jewish Presence

In the world today the word “settler” evokes the image of foreign colonisers, but in reality, Jews living in Judea and Samaria are returning to the cradle of their civilisation: Hebron, Shiloh, Beit El, and Shechem are biblical towns where Jewish life thrived for millennia. In the words of legal scholar Eugene Kontorovich: “Israel’s presence in the West Bank is not an occupation under international law, because there was no prior lawful sovereign, and the land was allocated to the Jewish people under binding international law”.

“Jews living in Judea and Samaria are returning to the cradle of their civilisation”

Background
Unfortunately, the European Union (and its predecessor the EEC) has chosen to ignore the history of the land prior to the June 1967 war. The EU has since 1970’s demanded that Israel end its occupation of what it regards as Palestinian territory. In 1980, the EEC issued the Venice Declaration, which essentially committed the Europeans to support the PLO in its efforts to enable the Palestinian people “to fully exercise their right to selfdetermination”. In article 7 the Europeans demanded that the PLO be associated with negotiations.

Since 1980, the European position has hardened into a demand that a Palestinian state be established in the entirety of the “occupied” territories.

The EU’s most recent actions targeting Israeli “settlers” has been stimulated by the 2024 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice, in which a majority of the Court’s members opined that Israel’s occupation of the territories captured by Israel in June 1967 has become illegal, and that Israel must remove Israelis from these territories. Several of the Court’s own judges were highly critical of this conclusion.

This majority Opinion is often regarded as justifying the view that somehow all Israelis in these territories are illegal. However, such an approach is highly problematic from a historical perspective, as it completely disregards the facts (as inferred in the introduction to the article above) that Jews have been living in what is now known as the “West Bank” for millennia, that Jordan ethnically cleansed Jerusalem and the West Bank of Jews between 1948 and 1967, and that many Jews who now live there are neither responsible for the Israeli military administration nor have they ever been “deported” or “transferred” by the State of Israel within the meaning of article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention (this provision being the sole ground for the claim that settlements are illegal), nor does their presence as such prevent Palestinians from fulfilling their self-determination rights.

As for the presence of Jewish people in the West Bank, it’s noteworthy here to refer to the dissenting opinion by Judge Sebutinde in the ICJ case “Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.”  She writes that, “whilst the exact nature of the rights conferred under the Mandate has been the subject of much discussion, the language of the Mandate shows that with respect to the territory then known as “Palestine”, the Jewish people were the main beneficiaries of those rights.” According to Sebutinde, the Mandate clearly confirmed the right of the Jewish people to settle, self-determine and live peacefully in the Mandate territory.

It is against the background of the European bias towards the Palestinians that we must view the most recent efforts of the European Union to make the presence of Jewish life in the West Bank a sanctionable offense.

On May 28th the European Council adopted additional restrictive measures against four entities and three individuals under the European Union’s Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime. Those targeted by the measures are labelled by the Council as “extremist Israeli settlers and organisations”, which are “responsible for serious and systematic human rights abuses against Palestinians in the West Bank, including abuse of the right of everyone to enjoy the highest attainable standard of physical and mental integrity, the right to property, the right to private and family life, to freedom of religion or belief and the right to education.”

The designations include the Nachala Settlement Movement and its Director Daniella Weiss. According to the European Council, the movement encourages and facilitates coercive acts that lead to the forced displacement of Palestinians. The Council also lists the Israeli NGO Regavim and its director Meir Deutsch. The council remarks that Regavim and its leadership lobby for the demolition of Palestinian property “with the aim to expand the control of Israel to the whole West Bank and institute legal proceedings to that end.”

Restrictive measures are also imposed against the Hashomer Yosh NGO—an organisation that offers material support and coordinates volunteers on the herding farms, supporting outposts and settlements in the West Bank—and its president Avichai Suissa. Additionally, the Council lists the Amana cooperative association of the settler movement Gush Emunim. Since its creation, Amana has played a key role in initiating, financing, and facilitating at least 30—in view of the Council: “violent”—outposts and settlements.

The European Union’s policy deliberately mixes together criminal acts (real or manufactured) by a small number of Israelis against Palestinians—acts that are both inseparable from and greatly outnumbered by acts of terrorism by Palestinians. Israel’s leaders and rabbis condemn criminal acts by settlers categorically, in contrast with the Palestinian Authority, which pays pensions to its terrorists. The clearance rate on such incidents is low, but that is also true of property crime in US and European cities.

“It should be noted how the “settler violence” story is made up”

It should be noted how the “settler violence” story is made up. The production cycle goes like this: A deceptive NGO report becomes a settled account, trumpeted by human-rights organisations that are themselves funded by the European Union. Reporters and international bodies cite the NGOs without independent verification. Policymakers cite the resulting consensus. The European states that funded the NGOs making the claims then impose sanctions accordingly. What passes for evidence is often nothing more than a chain of ideological citations. And when a handful of these stories were finally forced to address facts, the narrative fell apart.

A good example is the case of Amana. Following the Biden administration’s lead, the European Union sanctioned Amana for “initiating, financing, and facilitating at least 30 violent outposts and settlements.” The word violent in that sentence is doing the work here. What makes an outpost “violent”? Amana pours concrete and lays roads. But under the definitions used by the United Nations, anything from exercising self-defense to an individual committing petty theft is classified as violence. This then allows the European Union to state with a straight face that Amana “facilitated violent outposts” without identifying a single act of violence that Amana directed, funded, or encouraged. Nowhere in its report does the Council identify one single violent incident committed by Amana. As one can see: this is not a legal standard but a word game.

Conclusion
There is no doubt that there have been isolated acts of violence by Israelis against Palestinians in the West Bank. These are illegal under Israeli law, and Israel should ensure they are prevented and punished.

However, framing settler violence as a crisis threatening global security reinforces a narrative of predatory fundamentalist Jews dispossessing Palestinians.

Criminal activity level of by Jews in Judea and Samaria is a domestic Israeli law enforcement matter and should be treated as such. As this article has shown, the ‘settler violence’ story is fabricated and often thrown into the world without any supporting evidence. The European Union should stop its policy that undermines Israel’s legitimate sovereign rights to security and territorial integrity, and even more keep itself from turning Jewish presence in the West Bank into a sanctionable offense.

The Hague Initiative for International Cooperation (thinc.) is a global network of international law academics, practitioners and experts in related disciplines. Founded in 2017 in The Hague—the global capital of international law—our mission is to promote peace and security in the Middle East and beyond through the fair and consistent application of international law. We challenge the political instrumentalisation of international law and legal frameworks, advocating for principled legal standards that respect the sovereign equality of states and foster regional stability and cooperation.