NOTWe call on the President of the Republic and French parliamentarians to put an end to the importation of goods and services produced in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. While the International Court of Justice [CIJ] recognized, on January 26, the risk of genocide against the civilian population of the Gaza Strip, France must take concrete measures to force the State of Israel to tackle the root causes of the repeated cycles of violence, linked to the territorial and economic colonization of the occupied Palestinian territory. It must ban trade with Israeli settlements.
The question of colonization of the occupied territory of the West Bank may seem distant from the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip. However, colonization, which constitutes a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention, is at the heart of the spiral of tensions and violence between Israelis and Palestinians. Today, around 700,000 Israeli settlers are established in the West Bank, including more than 225,000 in East Jerusalem, at the cost, in particular, of land and property grabs from the Palestinian population, violence, forced displacement and ‘an unequal system of access to essential services such as water, electricity and even transport.
More than 32,500 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip, the majority women and children. But attacks and violence by settlers and the Israeli army against Palestinian communities have also reached an unprecedented level in the West Bank, where more than 430 Palestinians have been killed since October 7.
Illegal occupation
The President of the Republic rightly recalled that the emergency response of a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip must be joined a political response to the Israeli-Palestinian question. However, colonization, in addition to being a factor of violence, makes a political outcome between the two peoples unrealizable by denying the Palestinians equal rights capable of allowing them to negotiate a just and lasting peace solution.
In 2016, Security Council Resolution 2334, adopted unanimously by the permanent members, recognized the illegality of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. Consequently, it demands from the State of Israel an immediate and complete cessation of “all its settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem” And “asks all States (…) to make a distinction, in their exchanges on the matter, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967”.
You have 55.29% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.