On a pause from genocide, Israel turns its focus to ethnic cleansing

On Sunday, February 23, Israel deployed tanks in the occupied West Bank for the first time in more than two decades. It was the latest in a series of bellicose stunts that escalated in January, in tandem with the implementation of the tenuous ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip.

Of course, the inherently long-term nature of Israel’s genocidal policy in Gaza means that any ceasefire is inevitably temporary. In the 15-month assault on the Palestinian enclave that began in October 2023, the Israeli military officially killed at least 48,365 Palestinians, the majority of them women and children – although the true death toll is undoubtedly far higher. Most of Gaza’s inhabitants were displaced by the Israeli onslaught, many of them more than once.

Now, The Times of Israel reports that more than 40,100 Palestinians in West Bank refugee camps like Jenin have “fled their homes” since January 21, which is “allegedly the largest displacement in the territory since the Six Day War in 1967”. And on Sunday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz instructed the army to prepare for an “extended presence in the cleared camps for the next year, and not to allow the return of residents”.

Anyway, there’s nothing like ethnic cleansing to pave the way for annexation, the chief fantasy of the Israeli right wing. The thoroughly illegal scheme may also soon be receiving an explicit endorsement from United States President Donald Trump, who remarked in early February: “People do like the idea, but we haven’t taken a position on it yet.”

On Monday – one day after Israel’s deployment of tanks in the West Bank and Katz’s de facto ethnic cleansing announcement – the European Union and Israel held the 13th meeting in Brussels of the EU-Israel Association Council, attended by representatives of all 27 EU states and co-chaired by Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar.

In theory, the meeting would have been a timely opportunity to call Israel out on mass forced displacement and ongoing slaughter in the West Bank – not to mention, you know, genocide in Gaza. Three days prior to the Brussels rendezvous, Israeli forces fatally shot two Palestinian children in the back near Jenin and Hebron, respectively.

Article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement specifies that “relations between the Parties, as well as all the provisions of the Agreement itself, shall be based on respect for human rights and democratic principles.” And it was this article that was invoked in February 2024 by the leaders of Spain and Ireland, who called for a review of whether Israel was violating the agreement’s human rights obligations.

But at Monday’s meeting with Sa’ar, it was clear that the EU – Israel’s largest trading partner – was more concerned with preserving its association with a country guilty of all manner of war crimes and crimes against humanity. In the official pre-meeting “note” regarding the EU position, the General Secretariat of the EU-Israel Association Council started by emphasizing that “the EU attaches great significance to its close relations with the State of Israel.”

A lot more kissing of Israel’s backside ensues throughout the remainder of the 28-page PDF document, with the EU alternately expressing “its full solidarity and support to Israel and its people” and identifying Israel as a “key partner for cooperation” in numerous areas. The note underscores how much the EU “looks forward” to working with Israel to “address global challenges” as well as to “accelerate the world shift to a secure and just food system” – a pretty rich task to assign the folks who were just using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza.

This is not to say that the Europeans have not managed a single critique of Israel in 28 pages. The note takes care to mention that “the EU deeply deplores the unacceptable number of civilians, especially women and children, who have lost their lives” in Gaza; that “the EU recalls that annexation is illegal under international law”; and that “the EU remains gravely concerned about the extensive recourse by Israel to indiscriminate arrests and administrative detention without formal charge.” But any substantive condemnation is ultimately drowned out by the fact that Europe is just so darn excited to cooperate with Israel, now and forevermore.

The statement also informs us that “the EU is gravely concerned that the occupation of the Palestinian territory that began in 1967 continues to this day,” and repeatedly reiterates support for a two-state solution. And yet it’s anyone’s guess how, exactly, an end to occupation is supposed to come about, when the state that’s not only doing the occupying but also endeavouring to disappear the Palestinian people is being hailed as an awesome regional partner.

Speaking to reporters in Brussels, Israeli Foreign Minister Sa’ar defended Israel’s current campaign of forced displacement in the West Bank, which has entailed widespread killing by the army and illegal settlers as well as house demolitions: “It’s military operations taking place there against terrorists, and no other objectives but that.”

To be sure, the good old anti-terror excuse never fails to justify Israel’s perpetual terrorisation of Palestinians. At the start of Israel’s West Bank escalation in January, Defense Minister Katz also trotted out the T-word to explain how Israel was now applying “the first lesson from the method of repeated raids in Gaza” by subjecting Jenin to “a powerful operation to eliminate terrorists and terror infrastructure in the camp, ensuring that terrorism does not return to the camp after the operation is over”.

Indeed, Israel’s West Bank operations are but an extension of the genocidal approach to Gaza, with mass slaughter and displacement transpiring with full US and European complicity – minus the intermittent lip service paid to Palestinian rights.

It remains to be seen whether Trump will now propose a “Dead Sea Riviera” in the West Bank to rival his vision of the “Riviera of the Middle East”, which will supposedly spring forth from the ruins of the Gaza Strip once the US wrests control of the territory and expels the native population.

In the meantime, Israel’s crimes against humanity will continue to be normalised by the country’s “key partners for cooperation” across the globe, while genocide is increasingly relegated to the realm of non-news. And that, frankly, is a crime against humanity itself.

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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