#area c

Nonetheless, Palestinians have illegally built on more than 2,000 acres of Area C, spread across 250 different locations. This does not include 600 km of illegally-built roadways and more than 112,000 meters of retaining walls and terracing.

Investigative author Edwin Black, in a report entitled “EU Funding of Illegal Palestinian Settlement in Area C,” noted that Palestinian settlements “are often strategically scattered to effectively carve up Area C, sometimes surround Jewish villages, and sometimes push onto Israeli nature or military reserves.”

Black also described some of the various structures in these new, illegal settlements: Makeshift structures adorned with the EU logo on them, multi-floor office centers and palatial homes. “A broad gamut of construction styles can be seen,” he wrote.

All of this is being done in accordance with a joint Palestinian-EU plan to take control of land—without negotiations—for the creation of a de-facto Palestinian state based on the 1948 armistice lines that resulted from Israel’s war of independence.

An article in the Palestine-Israel Journal of Politics, Economics and Culture described the implementation of this plan: “Since August 2009, [Palestinian Prime Minister Salam] Fayyad, with the help of the Barack Obama administration and the European Union, has been quietly building national institutions and physical infrastructure . . . in the West Bank.”

Last year, it was revealed that the EU, too, has a secret plan to fund illegal Palestinian construction, known as the “European Joint Development Programme for Area C.” It has an annual budget of 300 million Euros.

One illegal Palestinian structure financed by the EU was a school located inside an Israeli nature reserve. Last May, Israel demolished it. In a statement, the IDF said the school was built illegally and “was found to be dangerous to the safety of anyone studying or otherwise visiting there,” therefore an Israeli court, “ordered it demolished.”

Instead of praising Israel for ensuring the safety of Palestinian children, the EU condemned the Jewish state. A spokesperson for the bloc said, “(Such) demolitions are illegal under international law and children’s rights to education must be respected.” Apparently, Palestinian children have the right to education, but not to safety.

Residents of Ein Samiya protest against their imminent displacement during an EU delegation visit two weeks before they were forced to leave [Jehad Barakat/Al Jazeera]

The EU is also abrogating its obligations under international law and practice as a witness and signatory to the Accords, not to undermine or undercut them. By any logic, rather than hounding Israel and undermining its legitimate governance in Area C, it might be expected that the EU would better expend its efforts and influence on encouraging the Palestinian leadership to return to the peace negotiating table rather than violating the Accords.

It would appear that the EU’s extreme and illogical fixation with Israel is not necessarily shared by state members of the EU. It seems to represent and echo the long-held personal aversion and hostility to Israel that the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell has displayed long before taking up his EU post.

Regrettably, this aversion to Israel is faithfully implemented by the EU External Action Service whose major purpose and staff seem to be devoted to undermining and seeking to delegitimize Israel. So much so that it is patently clear that the tail appears to be wagging the dog, rather than the opposite.

It is high time that the state members of the EU play a greater role in determining EU policies regarding the Middle East peace process, rather than allowing the biased, partisan and fixated EU External Action Service to dictate policy regarding Israel and the territories.

The European Union is formulating a new program to protect Palestinian claims in parts of the West Bank fully controlled by Israel, known as Area C, according to a confidential document reported by Israeli television.

The six-page document from June 2022, titled “European Joint Development Programme for Area C,” says that the EU “aims at defending the right of Palestinians living in Area C and preserving Area C as part of a future Palestinian State in line with the Oslo Accords.”

It also lays out practical steps such as mapping out land in Area C, according to Israel’s Channel 13 news, which broke the story on Monday.

The EU document discusses the need to provide legal aid to Palestinians in Israeli courts to protect their claims, and to monitor Israeli archaeological digs in Area C, which it sees as a tool Israel uses to tighten and justify its control over the West Bank.

Amnesty International accused Israel on Wednesday of an "ethnic cleansing" campaign against Bedouin and herding communities in the occupied West Bank, saying the measures aimed to accelerate the annexation of the Palestinian territory. A new report by the rights group found that these rural Palestinian communities were bearing the brunt of Israeli settler violence and forced displacement. "Israeli authorities are accelerating annexation through a state-driven campaign of ethnic cleansing targeting Palestinian Bedouin and herding communities" of the West Bank, said the report. Amnesty said its research showed that 27 Bedouin and herding communities comprising hundreds of Palestinians were forcibly displaced between 2023 and 2025 or were at risk of displacement in the West Bank's Area C, which encompasses 60 percent of the territory and is under full Israeli control under the 1990s Oslo agreements. In the report titled "Erasing anything Palestinian: Israel's ethnic cleansing of West Bank Bedouin and herding communities", Amnesty accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government, one of Israel's most right-wing to date, of catering to the settler movement's religious nationalist agenda. "It has accelerated settlement expansion and land grabs, increased financial and logistical support to settlements, and it has armed settlers, thereby enabling a brutal state-sanctioned campaign of settler violence," the report said. In an apparent effort to counter arguments by Israeli officials that settler violence is caused by bad actors in that community, Amnesty pointed to "explicit calls by Israeli officials for settlement expansion" and "measures aimed at minimising Palestinian presence in Area C". The "ethnic cleansing campaign is state-led, and state-sponsored, not driven by rogue settlers or so-called extremist ministers", the report concluded.