Europe is Abandoning Israel
Our goal in Christians United for Israel is to ensure that the United States continues to support our ally, Israel. We are not a European organization, and we have never held much hope that Europe would stand up for Israel as strongly as America does.
But recent events have disappointed our already low expectations. Simply put, Europe is rapidly turning against Israel. In late October, Sweden officially recognized a Palestinian state. Since then, the parliaments of Britain, France, Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Luxembourg have voted in support of recognizing a Palestinian state. This week, the EU voted to recognize a Palestinian state “in principle.”
There are, of course, many Israelis and friends of Israel who support the creation of a Palestinian state. But they all support the creation of such a state as the result of a peace process. The want to trade land for peace. These Israelis are willing to give up land so long as the Palestinians agree to end their conflict with Israel and give up their claim to a “right of return” for millions of descendants of Palestinian refugees. This is exactly why Israel offered to give the Palestinians a state in the West Bank and Gaza — with East Jerusalem as its capital — in 2000, 2001 and 2008.
The Palestinians turned all of these offers down. The Palestinians don’t want land for peace. They want the land without having to concede anything to Israel. And now one European nation after the other is lining up to give them exactly that. Europe is demanding that Israel withdraw from strategically vital and historically precious land in exchange for … absolutely nothing. This would be the first step in the creation of another Hamas — or even ISIS — base overlooking Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. This would be a repeat of Gaza. This is not a recipe for peace; this is a recipe for disaster.