Ina face-t-face meeting with her Israeli counterpart in Berlin this Tuesday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock strongly condemned Israel’s expansionist policies in the West Bank.
On this Tuesday evening, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen arrived in Berlin and met with his German counterpart Annalena Baerbock. But Cohen was not expecting a cold shoulder from Baerbock in the first minutes of their meeting.
Criticizing Israel for the rise in its expansionism in the occupied Palestinian West Bank, the German Foreign Minister urged Cohen during a joint press conference to put an end to the trend before it is too late. Baerbock also expressed concern about Israel’s planned judicial overhaul, as well as plans to impose the death penalty against Palestinian prisoners.
“I will not deny that we abroad are concerned about some of the legislative plans in Israel,” she told the media during the press conference. “Among the values that unite us is the protection of constitutional principles such as the independence of the judiciary,” Baerbock also noted.
Indifferent to the objections from Baerbock, however, Cohen said that Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank would continue to be built under the current government, as they had under the previous one.
“Definitely, we will continue to build there as well,” Cohen said. “We will preserve the important relations with Germany on bilateral, European, and international levels.”
Cohen, however, didn’t comment on his counterpart regarding the Netanyahu’s decision to limit the power of Israel’s supreme court, a move that has sparked massive protests in Israel for the past weeks and is still ongoing.
Germany had before voiced its concern about Israel’s unbridled passion for taking Palestinian lands. In mid-February, and along with the US, the UK, France and Italy, Germany issued a statement noting that they were “deeply troubled” by Israel’s decision to dramatically expand its network of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.
In the joint statement, the foreign ministers of the above-mentioned countries also rejected Israel’s recent decision that it is advancing nearly 10,000 new settlement units and intends to begin a process to normalize nine illegal outposts.
“We strongly oppose these unilateral actions which will only serve to exacerbate tensions between Israelis and Palestinians and undermine efforts to achieve a negotiated two-state solution,” said the statement.
No end to Israel’s expansionism even despite objections
Regardless of all the objections even from Israel allies in the West, the Netanyahu government with its extremist ministers is moving faster than ever in illegally occupying the West Bank.
Just to give an example, Israeli occupation authorities issued demolition orders for six Palestinian homes and two water wells in the occupied West Bank this Monday.
The trend has seen an alarming increase especially since the extreme far-right government led by Benjamin Netanyahu took office in the onset of this year. Only in February, the Palestine Data Centre documented the demolition of 40 Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem in addition to the issuing of dozens of demolition orders for homes and facilities.
Moreover, at the same time as settlement requirements for Israelis are becoming more and more easy thanks to the Netanyahu government, building licenses are getting extremely difficult and very expensive for Palestinians to obtain, if not issued at all by the occupation authorities.
The whole situation has led many political experts to come to the conclusion that if Israel expansionism is not stopped immediately, it will indeed result in ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
