If you want a two-state solution, Europe, start fighting for it

to cease business with Israeli banks operating in settlements. Insurance companies and other institutions should also be included.

The signs do not encourage optimism. Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic have increasingly taken Israel’s side and adopted anti-Palestinian positions. Britain has hugged the Israeli position under Prime Minister Theresa May, even more so since January, in the hopes of being seen in a good light by Trump. France’s efforts have come to an effective halt. Consensus has all but vanished.

Courage seems thin on the ground too. The carrots are too small, the sticks too weak. Israel has demolished or seized at least 236 EU-funded structures in the West Bank since 2009 alone, and a further 600 are under threat. Brussels does not even seem willing to protect EU taxpayers’ money let alone international law or human rights. Once again, divisions in the ranks hold it back. Fifty-six Palestinian schools face demolition in the West Bank for Israeli colonial expansion. What must Palestinians think when Mogherini can only state that she “deeply regrets” settlement expansions, as if it were just an Israeli mistake and not a systematic program of theft and colonization.

Rumors of an announcement during the UN General Assembly of the resumption of peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis are barely believable. Israel wants open-ended talks with no end goal, while the Palestinian leadership politically requires concrete outcomes in a limited time, its constituency fed up with Israel’s talk and grab strategy and of escalating colonization without an end in sight.

The EU has to make a choice. It can be ever more irrelevant, merely a payer in Israel’s colonization project, or it can stand up for a peace process it has meekly but consistently backed for the past quarter of a century. Instead of wedding itself interminably to a two-state solution that Israel constantly undermines, it should advance the protection of human rights and international law with less focus on what a distant endgame might produce.

To do that, the EU needs to unshackle itself from its hesitancy, prove to Israel that it cannot be discounted, and deploy the many levers at its disposal. Once Sunday’s German elections are over, French President Emmanuel Macron and a re-elected Chancellor Angela Merkel can oversee this. Israeli leaders should be left in no doubt that continuing their occupation will lead to a pariah status and will have both legal and financial costs.

Chris Doyle is director of the London-based Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU). He has worked with the council since 1993 after graduating with a first class honors degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Exeter University. Twitter: @Doylech

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