The High Representative of Foreign Policy of the European Union (EU), Josep Borrell, openly accused Israel this Friday of having financed the Palestinian militia Hamas for years to weaken Palestine and strengthen the Israeli State. In a speech given at the University of Valladolid, where he has been named doctor Honorary, the head of European diplomacy has also insisted on the need to create a Palestinian State as part of a solution to the conflict, despite the refusal of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His statements were made known while, in Brussels, the Twenty-Seven gave final approval to a new sanctions regime that will be applied once morest those who provide economic support to Hamas, considered a terrorist organization by the EU and the United States.
Borrell’s message is the strongest that any European leader has launched on the hypothesis that the Israeli authorities have used resources to strengthen the organization that governs Gaza. “Hamas was funded by the Government of Israel in an attempt to weaken the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority.” [organización política fundada por el exlíder palestino Yaser Arafat en 1958, 10 años después de la independencia israelí]”, stated Borrell from Valladolid.
It is not the first time that the idea that Netanyahu’s government has promoted Hamas has been raised, something that the Israeli prime minister denies. This has been stated by both the Israeli opposition and analysts and different national and international media, at least since the conflict broke out: The New York Times claimed in December that the Qatari government sent millions of dollars to the Gaza Strip for years to support the Hamas government, an action that had the approval of Israel, which “not only tolerated these payments, but encouraged them” until recently. before the militia terrorist attack on October 7, according to the American newspaper. Also The Times of Israel has stated that the Government “has since 2018 allowed suitcases with millions in cash from Qatar to enter Gaza to maintain its fragile ceasefire with the Hamas rulers in the Strip.” Borrell himself, during a parliamentary debate on Gaza last December in the plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, cited statements by Netanyahu in March 2019 before the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) stating: “Transferring money to Hamas (…) “It is part of our strategy to ensure that there never is a Palestinian state.” However, it is the first time that the head of European diplomacy so directly accuses Israel of having financed and fed Hamas.
In his speech of thanks to the appointment as doctor Honorary At the university where he taught in 1982 as an associate professor of Mathematics, Borrell has also once once more demanded the creation of a State in Palestine, as was done in the past in Israel, because otherwise “the spiral of hatred will continue generation following generation.” For the highest figure of the community foreign policy, “the only solution is to create two States that share the land for which they have been dying for 100 years”, a solution that must be “imposed from the outside”, that is, from the international community . “Everyone, except Israel”, wants this outcome, he has added, although he has also made self-criticism of the role of the EU: “he has done little and preached a lot”.
New sanctions once morest Hamas and Islamic Jihad
On the same day that Borrell conveyed these ideas, the European Union has adopted a new legal framework to sanction those who “support, facilitate or allow violent actions by Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad” and has already appointed a first group of six people, who will have all the funds and economic resources they have in European territory immobilized and will be prohibited from carrying out economic transactions with them.
“With this new framework of restrictive measures once morest those who support the violent actions of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the EU shows that we are willing to take decisive steps to react to the brutality shown by the terrorists on October 7,” said Borrell. in a statement issued from Brussels. “Israelis and Palestinians deserve to live in a just, secure and lasting peace,” he added.
In addition to sanctioning those who finance Hamas, the new regulation also allows it to be done once morest those who provide, sell or transfer weapons and related material to the two terrorist organizations or “support actions that undermine or threaten the stability or security of Israel” or are involved in “serious violations of international humanitarian law, publicly inciting or provoking public actions” by the two sanctioned organizations, the EU Council has highlighted.
Those sanctioned in this first round are six individuals from Sudan, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine. Except for the Palestinian Musa Muhammad Salim Dudin, according to the EU, a “senior Hamas agent and member of its politburo” and the militia’s “investment office,” the rest are money changers or businessmen accused of having financed through their business networks to the Palestinian militia.
The six designated, who may be joined in the future by new individuals or companies, will also be “vetoed from entering our territory,” said a senior EU official shortly before the new regulation was published in the Official Gazette of the EU. EU.
The decision comes in the same week that the EU included the political leader of Hamas, Yahia Sinwar, on its terrorist blacklist, considered one of the masterminds of the terrorist attack once morest Israel on October 7 along with the militia’s military chief. , Mohamed Deif, who has been on that list since December.
Furthermore, this new agreement to sanction individuals or entities that finance Hamas comes just before the EU Foreign Affairs Council, which will be held this Monday in Brussels and which has a long agenda on the conflict in the Middle East. Diplomatic sources have indicated that they wanted to send a “political signal” for this meeting, in which the Israeli Foreign Ministers, Israel Katz, and the Palestinian, Riyad al Maliki, have also been invited – in separate meetings. as well as the heads of diplomacy of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, as well as the secretary general of the Arab League, Ahmed Aboul Gheit. Borrell will also participate in the event.
The sanctions on Hamas should form a “sequenced” package, according to other European sources, in which violent extremist settlers in the West Bank are also sanctioned, as Borrell has repeatedly requested. But various diplomatic sources confirm that there is still a lack of consensus to take this step, which requires unanimity among the Twenty-Seven.
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