The EU’s Feeble Attempts to Stop Funding Palestinian Terror, and the Outraged Palestinian Response

Every year, the European Union channels millions of dollars to Palestinian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), many of which are connected to, or simply branches of, terrorist groups. The EU has at last instituted new regulations to ensure that its funds cease going to such groups, but, writes Khaled Abu Toameh, these regulations are unlikely to accomplish much:

This opaque language [of the new funding guidelines] means that even if a Palestinian NGO applying for EU grants is an affiliate of terrorist groups, or employs individuals from these groups, the EU will [nonetheless] provide it with taxpayer funding—whether designated for emergency responses to COVID-19 or for regular programs.

But even these small steps have aroused Palestinian ire:

In a nutshell, the Palestinian attitude regarding Western funding has always been: “You Westerners owe us this money because you contributed to the establishment of Israel after World War II. Thus, you have no right to set any conditions for the funding. Just give us the money and shut up. Any refusal to comply with our demands will result in our rage, and possibly terrorism and other forms of violence, not only against Israel, but also against you [non-Muslims] in the West.”

The EU “anti-terror” clause thus has drawn sharp criticism from . . . dozens of NGOs based in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Their main complaint is that they cannot accept “politically conditioned funding” from any party, including EU donors. . . . It remains to be seen whether the Europeans will cave to Palestinian threats of retaliation and drop their demand that EU money actually feed hungry people rather than feed Palestinian terrorists’ hunger for Jewish blood.

Read more at Gatestone

More about: Europe and Israel, European Union, NGO, Palestinian terror

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF