“Intervention by Yiorgos Loukaides in the debate on: Political consequences of the new Israeli Settlement Regulation Law”
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
Spring Summit, 24-28th April 2017
The Israeli parliament’s action to pass the “Settlement Regulation Law” constitutes an operation to retrospectively legalize the theft of Palestinian territories. This act goes beyond all previous actions. It undermines the prospect of peace. It demonstrates a contempt for the entire international community, given that it was approved just a few weeks after the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 2334 calling on Israel to end the settlements.
We all know that colonization is the other aspect of the Israeli occupation and policy, through which the establishment of an independent Palestinian state is rendered essentially and practically impossible.
Israel is stealing the land, water and natural wealth of the Palestinians by all means. It is demolishing their homes and villages. It is even destroying facilities built with international and European aid. It is destroying farmers’ crops. It is imprisoning and killing Palestinians. It allows the ultra-right settlers to wage attacks unpunished. It is forcing Palestinians to live under military law in apartheid conditions. At the same time, the blockade of Gaza, the imprisonments and the illegal wall of shame are all continuing. All these actions are known to us all for decades and unfortunately Israel makes sure to remind us of them every day.
We must, however, stress that the escalation of the Israeli government’s provocations has its causes. It is also due to the long-standing immunity it enjoys primarily on the part of the US and the EU; an immunity and the billions of dollars of support that all US governments grant to the Israeli war machine, covering up at the same time its nuclear arsenal.
What other message is the Trump government conveying to Netanyahu other than to continue his intransigence when it is declaring its readiness to abandon the two-state solution and transfer the American embassy to Jerusalem? How substantive are the EU’s verbal denunciations when the EU-Israel Association Agreement is still in force and when the arms trade of European countries is continuing with Israel?
The PACE must send out a strict and clear message to Israel that corresponds to the degree of its provocation. We must call on governments and parliaments to take concrete steps so that Israel puts an end to and is held to account for the systematic and flagrant violations of International Law.
In closing, I want to express our solidarity with the hundreds of Palestinian political prisoners in the Israeli prisons who have begun a hunger strike a few days ago. Approximately 6,500 Palestinians, including 300 children, who are imprisoned in Israel under inhumane conditions – indeed some of them without ever having been accused of anything – are another side of the Israeli occupation and drama of the Palestinians. However, they also represent another aspect of the heroic resistance of the unflinching people of Palestine, in its struggle for a free, sovereign and independent homeland, for justice and peace.
