It was left-wing Israeli governments that founded settlements in ‘East Jerusalem’ and the Jordan Valley. Israel’s security depend on them.
Many European nations and Canada, led by Great Britain, plan comprehensive trade sanctions against the West Bank.
Hidden — unappreciated — dangerous — historically ignorant — among the complex issues in this sanctions plan is the safety of Jerusalem — and that’s at a minimum.
Among the complex issues are the issues of a Palestinian state, the violence against Palestinians carried out by “Hilltop Youth,” and the dramatic increase in the weaponry of the Palestinian Authority, poised for attack, not only on West Bank Jewish communities but on Jewish communities on the other side of the Green Line.
All these issues require assessment in their own right. They seem to exhaust the overall picture of the status of the West Bank and of Europe’s and Canada’s sanction plan.
They do not. They hide the key element in the sanction plan. Taken together, they cloud the danger to Jerusalem and indeed all of Israel. The sanction plan defines “West Bank” as including Jewish communities in “East Jerusalem.”
Here, too, one must peel away layers to get to the kernel, the critical danger. Here too, complex issues, though requiring their own assessment, obscure the heart of the matter.
Among the complex issues around Jerusalem to put aside are the issue of Israel’s right to its own capital and the unacknowledged and the wonderful reality of Israel-Palestinian coexistence in Jerusalem. The key element in Europe’s targeting of Jewish communities in East Jerusalem is why these communities are there, why they came to be.
The Jewish communities in what Europe calls “East Jerusalem” were not conceived by a right wing Israeli government. They were conceived by left wing governments in the aftermath of the Six Day War, before a single right-wing government was ever elected in Israel, in 1977.
These communities began to take form in 1969.
These communities were not conceived as an attempt to thwart a Palestinian state, which no one — neither Israelis nor the Jordanian Arab citizens on the West Bank — even articulated.
These communities were not initiated as illegal outposts by extremists.
These communities were built for one reason — so that Jerusalem would never again be within the range of gunfire from Arabs on the West Bank; so that the lives of Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem would never again be at the mercy of attacking Jordanians; so that the buildings of Jerusalem never again go up in flames due to their cheek-by-jowl adjacency to enemy Arab locales.
The Jewish communities surrounding Jerusalem were built as a buffer against future invasions by Arab enemies. These communities were built to prevent any future, military, unimpeded entrance into the heart of Jerusalem.
In a word, these communities were built for safety. By sanctioning the Jewish communities of “East Jerusalem” — Ramat Eshkol, Sanhedria Murchevet, Ramot, Gilo, French Hill and others — Europe is saying:
• Israel has no right to protect the people of its capital.
• Israel has no right to devise a workable plan to defend itself on a very tiny land patch, every square acre of which plays a critical role in the safety of those who live there.
Still more:
In the aftermath of the Six Day War, Israel took control of the Jordan River Valley and built settlements there for the very same reason. The Jordan River was the favored entry point of Palestinian terrorists into Israel. The Jordan River Valley was porous. The Jewish settlements there — literally on the West Bank of the Jordan River —protected Israel against Palestinian terrorism.
Speaking of which, European nations and Canada now want to sanction Israel due to violence by Hilltop Youth against Palestinians, but never sought to sanction Palestinians for the larger, more sustained and longer lasting violence against Israelis by Palestinian murderers.
By sanctioning Jewish communities on the West Bank, Europe is telling Israel: Sacrifice your safety by reopening your country to Palestinian attacks coming across the Jordan River. Remember: No less than King Hussein himself of Jordan recognized the Palestinian threat in Jordan and went to war against the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1972, to extirpate the Palestinian threat to his country.
The European sanctions would have us believe that Israel has no legitimate security concerns on the West Bank of the Jordan River. Europe would have us turn back the clock to the era when the safety of Jerusalem — and the safety of all the other Israelis cities close to the Jordan River — could not be secured. As we say, these sanctions are historically ignorant.
It’s not only history, however. If Israel’s settlements along the Jordan River would be dismantled, Palestinian terrorists would revert to form. The fact that Israel and Jordan are formally at peace does not change that, since Palestinian terrorists in Jordan walk freely, threaten Jordan’s regime itself and have no use for Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel.
If the neighborhoods surrounding the core of Jerusalem were dismantled, that could be the end of Jewish Jerusalem.
One can only conclude that these European sanctions, even assuming they have some merit, are not thought out, not in the interests of peace, not free of hypocrisy and therefore not received by Israel as anything but grandstanding.
Europe is in for a big surprise if Netanyahu loses the coming election in Israel (Oct. 27). Just like Netanyahu, his successor will not give a blink’s worth of consideration to changing the status of “East Jerusalem’s” Jewish communities or of the Jewish settlements along the Jordan River Valley.
© IJN 2026
