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Source: https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Sykes-Picot-2018-The-EU-and-Khan-al-Ahmar-568707
The EU and Khan al-Ahmar
(Jerusalem Post) Gerald M. Steinberg - Today, European politicians, diplomats, and NGOs are busy drawing new borders for what they imagine to be a "solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They are currently focusing their attention on the tiny encampment of Khan al-Ahmar, situated strategically just outside Jerusalem on the four-lane highway that connects Israel's capital to the Dead Sea and the Jordan River. For three decades, Israel has rejected all the efforts to turn Khan al-Ahmar into a Palestinian outpost along the strategic highway near Jerusalem. As 20 years of Israeli court rulings have confirmed, the law clearly prohibits anyone - Palestinians, Bedouin and Europeans - from squatting on land that is not theirs and starting to build. The Oslo accords declared Area C, where Khan al-Ahmar is located, to be under full Israeli control. Yet the Europeans have dotted Area C with EU flags hoisted above one-room pre-fabricated huts which, to add to the emotional impact, are usually declared to be schools. Destroying a school is ideal for accusing Israel of human rights violations, and Khan al-Ahmar's European school is featured in the current campaign of solidarity visits by European diplomats and UN officials. As part of this campaign, Palestinian NGOs funded primarily by European governments have spent millions of euros from European taxpayers to churn out urgent statements, reports, and social media posts declaring the plan to resettle the residents of Khan al-Ahmar to be a "war crime." The writer, professor of political studies at Bar-Ilan University, is president of the Institute for NGO Research.