An Open Letter to the European Union On the UN Human Rights Day

 

For the last few days,  we have been hearing  about the European Union contemplating  to impose sanctions on Turkey.  I am not going to indulge in the reasons justifying those sanctions.  However,  on this 10^th day of December,  I want to seize the occasion of the United Nations Human Rights Day to pose a question to the European Union,  that  has been watching the daily violations of Palestinian human rights by the Israeli occupying forces including the demolition of schools which the European Union itself  has provided funding for.  When will the European Union think it is appropriate to consider or in fact to actually impose sanctions on Israel?  After the visit  to the site of the schools and the wide coverage it had on the media,  all that the European Union Representatives did was to condemn the action.  Israel could not care less, and it has become immune to any condemnation of its violations in the occupied territories.  Even when it kills young people,  it claims that it has a right to defend itself.

 

However,  I am sure Israel  won’t be that  immune if it is made to feel the brunt of its violations by some action on behalf of the international community.  So I am wondering what it is going to take for the  European Union to consider imposing sanctions on Israel, for its continuous  violations during its 53 years of a military occupation, which in itself is a violation of  the United Nations resolution 242 passed by a unanimous vote of the Security Council  on November 22, 1967  for the withdrawal of the Israeli forces based on the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.