There are innumerable cases where the rights and lands of Palestinian villagers are infringed or expropriated to serve the interests of settlements planted on the hills around them. The access of Palestinian villages to major arterial routes such as Highway 60 is increasingly blocked in order to reserve the route for settler traffic, leaving the villages with long, circuitous and irrational routes for all their communications with the outside world.
We are not in a position to raise every such case that arises; and, where these are the subject of court cases, we have in any event no means to intervene. But we have used our knowledge of cases such as this one to maintain a sharp focus on the continual and relentless damage and injustice inflicted on the Palestinian community by the Israeli authorities’ settlement programme. We have raised this issue directly with the Israeli authorities, and in discussions at EU and UN level, and have underlined that these actions are incompatible with a genuine search for a peace agreement. Ireland also funds Palestinian and Israeli NGOs who are active in challenging these orders and decisions through the legal and planning systems.
