In this mailing:

  • Bassam Tawil: The EU's Lethal Obsession with Israel
  • Judith Bergman: China Winning Technological War: Biden Administration Allowing It

The EU's Lethal Obsession with Israel

by Bassam Tawil  •  March 9, 2023 at 5:00 am

Facebook Twitter WhatsApp Telegram Send Print
  • What [EU] Representative [Sven] Koopmans forgot to mention that it is the Palestinians who have built tens of thousands of illegal structures in the West Bank, especially in Area C, which, according to the Oslo Accords, is under full Israeli security and civilian jurisdiction.

  • Koopmans also forgot to mention that the EU is helping the Palestinian Authority (PA) with the mass-scale illegal construction, paving the way for the de facto annexation of the territory.

  • The EU does not interfere anyplace else on the planet other than Area C -- not for the Kurds, the Assyrians, the Yazidis, the Uyghurs, the Kashmiris, the Tibetans or the Greek Cypriots. The Palestinians continue to be the only group on the EU's list of people with whom to interfere. This inordinate attention appears to stem not so much from love for the Palestinians as from hatred for Israel.

  • The EU, it seems, has funded literally thousands of illegal Palestinian modular buildings in territory that is legally under Israeli jurisdiction.

  • Lately, the EU has been concentrating more on agricultural land: one can acquire a much larger area for a much smaller investment.

  • By doing so, the EU is encouraging the Palestinians to engage in unilateral actions in violation of the agreements signed between the Palestinians and Israel.

  • This is the same EU that continues to warn Israel not to take any "unilateral actions," and that continues to criticize Israel for building and expanding "illegal" settlements in the West Bank.

  • As of 2022, the EU has built 81,317 illegal structures in Area C....

  • The EU's commitment to the expansion of illegal Palestinian settlement in Area C persists in full disregard of the Oslo Accords, which the EU purports to uphold.

  • "The object is to create continuous Palestinian settlement throughout the West Bank and thereby isolate and strangle Israeli communities," wrote Hillel Frisch, professor of Political Science and Middle Eastern History at Bar-Ilan University, in 2019.

  • The 2009 "Fayyad Plan" (officially titled "Palestine: Ending the Occupation, Establishing the State") was -- and remains -- a proposal to create facts on the ground that would end up as a Palestinian state if negotiations do not work out, thereby bypassing the need to negotiate with Israel as agreed to in the Oslo Accords.

  • The catch is: If the Palestinians believe that they can be handed a state by some external entity, such as the EU, at no cost to themselves, why should they ever bother to negotiate? For years, in fact, they have avoided coming to the negotiating table, presumably in the hope of precisely such a windfall.

  • The best interests of the Jahalin Bedouin were not the main concern of the Palestinian Authority. What was important to the PA was the land -- to take possession of it and then make whatever was built on it appear irreversible.

  • [T]hese new facts on the ground, of course, encourage the Palestinians not to negotiate. Why should they, if they can get everything they want by just taking it?

  • Fayyad's unilateral plan to create facts on the ground is totally in violation of the Oslo Accords, which state that "neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations."

  • At the end of last year, a secret document by the EU's mission in east Jerusalem showed that Brussels is also actively working with, and on behalf of, the Palestinian Authority to take over Area C of the West Bank.

  • Koopmans and other senior EU officials apparently know they are acting illicitly: they are doing their utmost to hide the fact that they are actively helping the Palestinians to break the law and violate the agreements signed with Israel.

  • Just as Israel does not meddle in the internal affairs of the EU member states, it is time to put an end to the EU's poisonous intrusion into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

  • Along the way, the EU might also want to consider the real source of its lethal obsession with Israel.

The EU, it seems, has funded literally thousands of illegal Palestinian modular buildings in territory that is legally under Israeli jurisdiction. By doing so, the EU is encouraging the Palestinians to engage in unilateral actions in violation of the agreements signed between the Palestinians and Israel. Pictured: The illegal Palestinian encampment of Khan Al-Ahmar, located within a few meters of the highway connecting Jerusalem with the Dead Sea and the Jordan Valley. (Image source: TrickyH/Wikimedia Commons)

European Union Special Representative for the Middle East Peace Process Sven Koopmans stated on February 17: "The EU wants build stronger ties with Israel, yet relations sadly remain burdened by the construction of illegal settlements on Palestinian land."

What Koopmans forgot to mention that it is the Palestinians who have built literally tens of thousands of illegal structures in the West Bank, especially in Area C, which, according to the Oslo Accords, is under full Israeli security and civilian jurisdiction.

Koopmans also forgot to mention that the EU is helping the Palestinian Authority (PA) with the mass-scale illegal construction, paving the way for the de facto annexation of the territory.

Continue Reading Article

China Winning Technological War: Biden Administration Allowing It

by Judith Bergman  •  March 9, 2023 at 4:00 am

Facebook Twitter WhatsApp Telegram Send Print
  • China has made no secret of its ambition to become, by 2049, the world's greatest power, surpassing the US as the economic, technological, political and military leader of the world. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been planning and operating in line with those ambitions for decades.

  • In July 2020, FBI Director Christopher Wray said that Chinese theft of US intellectual and other property is happening on "a scale so massive that it represents one of the largest transfers of wealth in human history."

  • A particularly disturbing technological lead is the leap China has made in the military and space sectors... China's research interests and performance in military and space sectors are particularly notable, including an advanced hypersonic missile that China tested, to the US military's surprise. China, it turns out, houses seven of the world's top 10 research institutions focused on the field of hypersonics.

  • The overriding importance of technology for the Chinese Communist Party is reflected in the fact that Chinese President Xi Jinping has filled 40% of the CCP Central Committee –- the institution that decides China's major policies -- with officials who have backgrounds and experience in aerospace, artificial intelligence and other critical technological areas.

  • If the US and other Western countries wish to check China's rise, they will have to make a far more serious effort to prioritize and invest in research and technology, not to mention doubling down on preventing more theft of technology and intellectual property.

  • Without urgent action on the part of the West, the world will soon be run by China.

China is winning the technological race with the West. A particularly disturbing technological lead is the leap China has made in the military and space sectors, including an advanced hypersonic missile that China tested, to the US military's surprise. Pictured: DF-17 hypersonic missiles at a military parade in Beijing, China, on October 1, 2019. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

China is winning the technological race with the West, and is well on its way to becoming the world's leading technology superpower, according to a new report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).

When ASPI tracked 44 critical technologies, it found that China was "further ahead in more areas than has been realized." More precisely, China was the leading country in 37 of the 44 technologies that ASPI tracked, with the United States coming in second and everyone else way behind. The US led the world only in the remaining seven technologies, including the design and development of advanced semiconductor devices, high performance computing, quantum computing and vaccines. The report noted:

Continue Reading Article

Facebook
Twitter
RSS
Donate
Copyright © Gatestone Institute, All rights reserved.

You are subscribed to this list as [email protected]

You can change how you receive these emails:
Update your subscription preferences or Unsubscribe from this list

Gatestone Institute
14 East 60 St., Suite 705, New York, NY 10022