A delegation of Members of the European Parliament (MEP), including ambassadors to Israel from several European Union countries, was refused entry to the Knesset building on Tuesday morning, July 21, where a meeting had been scheduled to take place between them and members of the Joint List. The Knesset claimed the meeting breached protocol and was thus barred from taking place within the legislature.
Hadash MKs Yousef Jabareen and Aida Touma-Sliman were forced to hold their discussion with the European delegation outside the Knesset building after the parliament’s speaker, MK Yuli Edelstein, agreed that the meeting could be held inside the building on the condition that the Knesset’s diplomatic adviser would be present. MKs Jabareen and Touma-Sliman refused to accept this condition whereupon and the speaker said the delegation would not be allowed entry.
Jabareen and Touma-Suliman expressed their disappointment with the speaker’s decision, emphasizing that it makes no sense to prevent the MKs from holding a meeting in their own faction’s offices without a Knesset representative being present, since politically sensitive discussions of this kind should take place without an unwanted presence.
Against EU Funding of Israeli Arms Companies
Seventy-three MEPs from different political groups in the European Parliament have addressed a letter to the High Representative of the European Union, Federica Mogherini, and to Robert Jan Smits, Director-General for Research and Innovation at the European Commission, objecting to the participation of certain Israeli companies in Horizon 2020, the EU’s vast research and development program.
Irish MEP Martina Anderson, who initiated the writing of the letter, noted that it was drafted in consultation with several European civil society and Palestinian human rights organizations regarding EU support to Israeli military companies through Horizon 2020. Anderson said: “These organizations had voiced their concerns about possible funding through Horizon 2020 going to the Israeli military company Elbit Systems and other Israeli companies involved in the illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian Territories. Such companies are deeply complicit in Israeli military aggressions against the Palestinian people.”
In the previous EU Research Program, FP7 (2007-2013), Elbit Systems and Israeli Airspace Industries participated in projects worth €393,600,149; a number of them were projects to advance the capabilities of drones. Anderson remarked that “funding for projects that include Israeli corporations involved in the ‘homeland security’ framework of the settlements risks undermining the guidance to private business issued by more than 20 member states that warn against economic ties that benefit the settlements.”
MEP Anderson concluded: “I believe it is our duty to ensure that EU taxpayers’ money is spent on projects that respect the EU’s commitment to upholding and promoting international law and is consistent with the EU’s position of non-recognition of settlements in the occupied Palestinian Territories.”
