EU Official Warns Israel Over Planned Construction

The European Union (EU) is unhappy with reports that Israel plans to publish tenders for the sale of 1,400 housing units in Judea and Samaria, Channel 10 News reported on Thursday.

A senior EU official who spoke to the channel issued a direct warning to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, saying that the EU would not tolerate new construction in Judea and Samaria.

"There will be very little understanding on the part of European governments regarding any announcement of construction in the territories now under negotiations....

"Ahh OK, I get it. When it suits you, you talk about the EU. When it’s not, you prefer to talk about it’s component parts. Everything’s much clearer now."

I was quite clear: any three EU countries. If Cyprus wants into the mix, they're welcome. And your other two EU countries would still need to figure out how they would get to Cyprus.

Given that their are two UK airbases on Cyprus and a combined military spending of those three of approx $170bn compared to $14bn by Israel, if they real wanted to they could easily dismantle Isreal.

Clearly there’s (thankfully) no will by either side for such a ludicrous scenario and the issue of nuclear weapons makes all scenarios messy.

However, the great thing about assertions is that one can stand by them even though the facts point in another direction.

Merry Christmas!

If only the outcome of wars could be determined by glancing at military expenditures... why, we'd have been done with that whole Afghanistan thing in five minutes and Vietnam in two weeks. And Germany won WWI. It's so simple!

" ...the issue of nuclear weapons makes all scenarios messy.

No. It's the deciding factor. It's the reason such a ludicrous scenario will never play out because Israel could credibly threaten the existence of London, Paris and Berlin.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you!

As an example of moving the goalposts, your post is a good one.

Your original post talked about Israel ‘kicking the snot’ out of 3 EU countries, in this case the UK, France and Germany. I’ve given you one metric of why that is hogwash (an absurd differential in military spending) but you didn’t like that one. I suppose all the others such as industrial capacity, GDP, population wont please you either.

Maybe it would be more useful if you could describe how, if they decided to go toe to toe, Israel would kick the said snot out of them. If ypu’re going to rest your case on the possesion of nuclear weapons it might have been better to write originally that Isreal could commit suicide by nuking any 3 EU countries.

Happy kwanzaaa!

"As an example of moving the goalposts, your post is a good one."

Yeah, I know how you feel. I said any three EU countries, citing their inability to project significant force over 200 miles, so you bring up Cyprus. I point out that Cyprus is a joke militarily, so you select Germany, France and England - ignoring the entire force projection thing (Cyprus' airfields would be cratered in 5 minutes, btw, and you would still need to bring all your gear and personnel to Cyprus in the first place). You bring up military expenditures and I point out that historically that is not a deciding factor (I even pointed out specific examples).

"Maybe it would be more useful if you could describe how, if they decided to go toe to toe, Israel would kick the said snot out of them. "

I can envision no scenario where any European country would put itself at significant risk to a credible nuclear strike to ever seriously threaten Israel militarily - particularly over construction sites. Sure they could threaten Israel with a counter-strike but it would never get that far because of the credible nuclear threat. And no, Israel wouldn't be the initiator of hostilities by launching a suicidal nuclear attack in the first place - the entire thread is about how Europe wants to impose its will on Israel. Well, do they feel lucky? They can run their mouths, but when push comes to shove, they have no capacity, or will, to enforce their decrees.

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