Israeli Press
Ynet says Europe weighs settlement sanctions but fears they would lift Netanyahu
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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Four European governments are discussing how to punish Israel for the E1 settlement tender and are held back by one calculation, the Israeli news site Ynet reported on Thursday: sanctions imposed now, nine weeks before the Israeli election, might work for Benjamin Netanyahu rather than against him.
Ynet reported that Germany, France, Britain and Italy are weighing measures over the tender for about 1,200 housing units east of occupied Jerusalem, on the argument that Israel had undertaken not to build beyond the Green Line — and that officials in those capitals fear the timing would strengthen the prime minister before 27 October.
The same site reported the diplomatic sequence of the past two days: Britain summoned Israel's chargé d'affaires in London, and the British foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, called the tender an unacceptable and destructive act that would endanger the viability of a two-state solution.
Miliband said Israel must halt the E1 plans immediately, retract the tender and stop all settlement expansion; he said he raised it directly with the Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Sa'ar, and that Britain will set out a comprehensive set of measures in the coming weeks, including sanctions on those involved in illegal settlement expansion.
Ynet also carried the response from the ground the plan would build on. The mayor of Ma'ale Adumim said Palestinian freedom of movement would not be harmed — the opposite, he said — and suggested Britain and the United Nations pay less attention to what he called fake.
The reason Palestinians read the tender differently#
E1 is twelve square kilometres of hills between occupied East Jerusalem and Ma'ale Adumim. Built out, it welds the settlement bloc to the city and cuts the road between the northern and southern West Bank, leaving Ramallah and Bethlehem joined only by detour roads Israel controls.
The tender opened bidding on 1,234 units of the 3,400-plus planned. Bids close on 19 October, eight days before Israelis vote.
António Guterres, the United Nations secretary-general, has called the E1 plan an existential threat to a contiguous Palestinian state.
The Israeli reporting is useful to Palestinian readers precisely because it treats European anger as an election variable. In that account the question in Berlin, Paris, London and Rome is not whether the corridor should be built, on which they agree, but whether saying so out loud in August helps the government that is building it.
