Israel has been asked by top European Union officials on Saturday to explain why its soldiers seized a truckload of humanitarian aid intended for Palestinians.
On Friday, Israeli soldiers manhandled European diplomats and seized emergency aid that was intended to be delivered to Palestinians whose homes were demolished this week, Reuters news agency reported.
EU officials said they deplored the confiscation of the aid.
“EU representatives have already contacted the Israeli authorities to demand an explanation and expressed their concern at the incident,” a statement issued by the spokesmen for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva said on Saturday.
Israeli soldiers were seen by a Reuters reporter throwing sound grenades at a group of diplomats, aid workers and locals in the occupied West Bank.
A French diplomat was seen being “yanked” out of the truck by soldiers before they drove it away.
Relations between Israel and the EU have been tense over the EU’s decision in July to bar financial assistance to Israeli organizations operating in the occupied territories from next year.
(With Reuters)

Israeli Troops attack European Diplomats on Aid Mission

Posted on 09/21/2013 by Juan Cole
First the Israelis again erased a Palestinian population, ruling that the 120 Bedouin inhabitants of Khirbet Makhul in the Occupied Palestinian West Bank did not have proper “building permits” for the huts in which they lived. These people have lived in Palestine since forever, and they are not in Israel. It is the Israelis who don’t have any permit to be in the West Bank. No international body ever awarded them this Palestinian territory. They just attacked it and conquered it and then started acting like they own it. Then the Russian, Polish, Ukrainian and other European-heritage Israeli troops whose families mostly came in the 1930s and after demolished these “unlicensed” dwellings, leaving the people homeless. The Palestinians refused to take the hint, and they stayed on their land. Then some European diplomats tried to drive out to give them some blankets and food, and Israeli troops stopped them, attacked them with sound grenades, threw some of them to the ground, and confiscated the aid. Among those tossed into the dust was French diplomat Marion Fesneau-Castaing, who has diplomatic immunity.


courtesy Reuters