Lord Wright of Richmond writes for ePolitix.com ahead of his question to ministers on EU support for President Obama's call for a freeze on Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
This question is related not to recent events in Gaza or to the Goldstone report but to continuing Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Since his speech in Cairo, in which President Obama called for a freeze on all Israeli settlement building, the Israel government has announced its approval of 450 new housing units in the West Bank and an Israeli NGO has claimed that 800 new units are secretly under construction in the West Bank.
In November, Prime Minister Netanyahu offered a 10 month "settlement freeze", or "moratorium", while declaring that this would not include public infrastructure, and would not cover occupied East Jerusalem. In response to this gesture, his supporters have been demanding some "diplomatic reward" - presumably in the form of agreement from Mahmoud Abbas that peace talks should resume.
It is hard to see why Abbas should be expected to respond positively when settlement activity in the West Bank is still continuing. As recently as the end of January, Netanyahu was reported, at a tree planting ceremony at the Gush Etzion settlement in the West Bank, to have declared: "We are planting here; we will stay here; we will build here. This place will be an inseparable part of Israel for eternity."
Israel has also stepped up its policy of evicting Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem, replacing them with Israeli settlers.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates that around 60,000 Palestinians are currently under threat of eviction in East Jerusalem. They have also reported some disturbing incidents of aggressive behaviour against Palestinians, including young Palestinian children, by Israeli settlers, with inadequate protection from Israeli military escorts.
The EU issued a rather meek statement of disapproval of settler activity in December, encouraging Israel "to continue along the path set forth by the moratorium".
The purpose of my question is to discover what action the EU is taking to support senator George Mitchell in his attempts to bring about a genuine cessation of Israeli settlement activity on occupied Palestinian territory.
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd