Israeli settlers betting Trump will frown on new EU blacklist

Getting an EU-funded school in the West Bank bulldozed can now get you banned from Europe, an angry and well-connected Israeli pro-settler group has found out.

The Jerusalem-based Regavim group and its founder, Meir Deutsch, came under an EU asset-freeze and visa-ban at 3.30PM on Thursday (29 May) on grounds of “seriously” abusing Palestinians’ human rights.

And the EU Council specifically cited Regavim’s role in the destruction of an EU-funded Palestinian building as its main motive.

“Regavim … lobbied for the demolition of a Palestinian primary school, funded by the European Union, at the Jabbet al Dhib village, near Bethlehem, in the West Bank in May 2023”, said the EU’s Official Journal.

The school used to have five classrooms and 45 pupils.

The Israeli bulldozers came after a court said it had been built without a permit and was a “safety hazard” to children, on the basis of a Regavim petition.

But the group’s spokeswoman denounced the EU sanctions in a statement to EUobserver.

“Regavim’s ‘crime’ involves petitioning to the courts against a dangerous, illegal, EU-funded school built on Israeli state land in a national historic site,” said Naomi Linder Kahn.

“The school was located at the foot of Herodium, where [a Biblical-era Roman Jewish] King Herod built a magnificent city – and then buried much of it when he decided to build his tomb there,” she added.

The new EU blacklist also included the Nachala Movement and its founder Daniella Weiss, the Hashomer Yosh group and its head Avichai Suissa, and the West Bank-based Amana settler cooperative.

The Weiss-group settlements were “persistent sources of settler violence” and it was at the “forefront of efforts to resettle the Gaza Strip”, the EU said.

Hashomer Yosh provided “armed volunteers and … guards involved in violent attacks” in some 28 settlements, it said.

And Amana was listed for “financing and facilitating at least 30 violent outposts and settlements”, it added.

Taken together, their actions “lead to the forced displacement of Palestinians and violate their right to property … private and family life and … self-determination,” the EU said.

EU-funded school in Khan al-Ahmar, near Jerusalem which cost €260,000 (Source: EU Commission)

King Herod’s schools

The EU citation of the Jabbet al Dhib case also pointed to Israel’s much wider destruction of foreign-funded facilities in Gaza and the West Bank.

And a group of cross-party MEPs have formally asked the European Commission if the EU taxpayer, or Israel, was to be liable for any future reconstruction costs.

European foreign ministers will discuss further options to chill Israeli aggression when they meet in Luxembourg on 15 June.

These include blacklisting extremist Israeli security minister Itmar Ben-Gvir for abusing EU nationals on a Gaza-aid flotilla and banning imports from Israeli settler firms.

Spain also renewed calls to suspend an EU-Israel free-trade treaty on Thursday citing Israel’s intensified airstrikes on Lebanon.

But while Thursday’s anti-settler sanctions may seem weak in Israeli-critical EU capitals, they send a message to the cabinet of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on curbing settler impunity.

Regavim was co-founded by Netanyahu’s now Israeli finance minister Ben Smotrich and three other Regavim alumni are senior Israeli officials.

It used drones and jeep patrols to find Palestinian structures targeted for demolitions.

A former Israeli MK, Moti Yogev, has called it an Israeli-state “intelligence officer”.

Regavim’s Linder Kahn said it was a “think-tank … civil society ‘watchdog’.”

And she said the EU sanctions sent an “unspoken message [also] to the Israeli courts, judges, and IDF [Israeli Defence Forces] officers … that the European Union will punish anyone who stands in the way of the establishment of a Palestinian state on the entirety of Judea and Samaria [the West Bank]”.

This was “attempting to criminalise dissent with the EU’s two-state policy”, she said, in what she described an Europe’s “descent into tyranny”.

The new EU asset-freezes could hurt the Jerusalem-based Amana to the extent that it has conducted fundraising in Europe or used EU banks.

It was guilty of “facilitating land acquisition, constructing and marketing houses, initiating and preparing settlements masterplans, and funding [settler] infrastructure” on Palestinian land, said the EU.

But Linder Kahn said neither Regavim, nor its boss Deutsch, had assets in Europe and that he “rarely visited the continent”.

Hoping for Trump

The EU visa-ban was an “outrageous attempt to silence a legitimate voice that continues to be a respected contributor to Israel’s public debate,” she said.

The nosedive in EU-Israel ties comes amid a nadir also in transatlantic relations under US president Donald Trump over the Middle East, Russia, and liberal values.

Trump’s Israel ambassador, Mike Huckabee, has said “the Jews have a God-given right to reclaim [their] land” – in direct opposition to the EU and UN’s two-state model.

And while Regavim claimed it was so independent of Netanyahu that “we are often as unpopular with Israel’s government as we are with the European Union,” it was still hoping to make Thursday’s EU mini-sanctions into a geopolitical incident, Linder Kahn said.

“We expect the Israeli government to ensure that Israeli civil society organisations are insulated from illegitimate foreign sanctions and we hope that the United States will not go along with this,” she said.