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EU's support for Israel's arms industry bolsters occupation

January 23, 2014 at 7:40 am

In 2012 the EU joined the ranks of Barack Obama and Henry Kissinger in being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for allegedly contributing to ‘peace’. Apart from Obama’s track record regarding the increasing drone attacks and Kissinger’s undisputed role in aiding Pinochet’s brutal coup in Chile, the EU’s ‘decades of contributing to peace, reconciliation, democracy and human rights’ is highlighted by its continuous financial support to the Israeli arms industry.

The usual political manoeuvring is clearly portrayed – while support in favour of a Palestinian state has increased through the years, the EU makes sure that rhetoric remains confined to its realm by strengthening the Israeli occupation’s oppression of Palestinians by sponsoring arms research in the name of security. Israel plays a major role as an ‘associated country’ in the European Security Research Programme (ESRP), which is part of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). The ESRP outlines the importance of combining technology, research and competitive security in order to safeguard human rights.


The Belgian activist movements Vredesactie and Intal organised protests last month, demanding that the EU ceases to fund the Israeli military industry, citing Elbit Systems and Israeli Aerospace Industries as having benefitted from their involvement in 69 research and development programmes subsidised by the EU.

Under the Israel-Europe Research and Development Directorate (ISERD), the occupying power is allowed to promote its academic and industrial developments, thus ensuring that Israel’s interests, as well as networking with European universities and companies, are represented within the EU research scheme. Apart from projects geared towards the wellbeing of civilians – a definition which needs to be discussed within the occupation framework, EU research programmes are also funding Israeli private arms companies, such as Elbit Systems, Elbit Security Systems, Aeronautics Defence Systems and Israeli Aerospace Industries.

The EU has absolved itself of complicity in strengthening Israel’s illegal occupation by citing cooperation agreements. Competence resulting in effective security technology is conveniently discussed in a separate dimension, thus allowing political rhetoric to gloss over the reality of human rights and international law violations. The EU security research programme insists that military technology is restricted to security purposes allegedly benefiting nations; hence the definition of ‘terrorism’ is exploited to include border control, immigration and surveillance.

By fuelling popular racist sentiment and stressing the need for security technology, the EU is conjuring a global image of ‘the other’, or ‘undesirable’, defining a hierarchy based upon the fragmentation of solidarity – a perfect reflection of all the wrong reasons why the EU has been lauded as an entity striving for peace, unless peace has become the embodiment of conspiratorial silence. There have been calls for ‘ethical criteria’ regarding the next EU research framework programme Horizon 2020, which should be launched in 2014. While activist groups are concerned about research and profits serving to oppress Palestinians further, the EU continues to abscond from its responsibility to end Israel’s colonial and apartheid practices, as well as determining alienation from Palestinian reality by manipulating the prevailing trends of xenophobia and ‘concern’ about migration trajectories.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.