Unconditional Czech support for Israel?

Last month, Israeli leftist former officials sent a diplomatic letter to the new Czech government in which they criticized the Czech Republic for not being critical enough of Israel, and instead expressing unconditional support. The officials, including former Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg and former MK and New Israel Fund President Naomi Chazan, said that Czech support for moving their embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, their vote against upgrading the Palestinians' status in the U.N., and the Czech ambassador's visit to Ariel University in the disputed West Bank, are detrimental to reaching an agreement with the Palestinians.

If these former Israeli officials followed Czech policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict more closely, they would see that the Czech Republic has never backed Israel unconditionally. Moreover, there is a slight decline in Czech support for Israel.

Let's take a closer look at the three criticized events.

(1) In the case of moving of the Czech embassy, after President Milos Zeman's proposal, the Czech Foreign Ministry almost immediately tried to calm the harsh response from Palestinian organizations -- including Hamas -- releasing a statement that "the Czech Republic will continue to cooperate within the EU and the international community to find a peaceful solution to the conflict", inter alia the status of Jerusalem, "through direct negotiations and promote a peaceful two-state solution." Czech officials later reaffirmed that the country had no plans to relocate its embassy. The president's spokesperson said the words had been taken out of context and repeated that the president had only expressed his personal desire to transfer the embassy to Jerusalem after a final settlement is reached between the Israelis and Palestinians.

However, it is regrettable that Israel has been denied the diplomatic right to choose the location of its capital. This has given rise to an unprecedented situation, since under international law, every country has the right to do so. Yet the international community has ignored Israel's choice for fear that it might antagonize Arab countries that do not recognize Israel's right to exist at all, let alone to exist as a Jewish state or to select its own capital.

Palestinians conceive east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. But recent public polls and surveys have shown that most Palestinians in east Jerusalem would prefer to become Israeli citizens rather than citizens of a new Palestinian state.

(2) In January 2014, the Czech Republic came under strong Palestinian criticism after Czech Ambassador to Israel Tomas Pojar visited Ariel University, which is located beyond the Green Line – the 1949 armistice lines. Palestinian chief peace negotiator Saeb Ereket sent a protest letter to the EU and stressed that Pojar both violated "EU guidelines," which prohibit any EU financial cooperation with Israeli entities beyond the Green Line, and undermined the peace Israeli- Palestinian peace process.

Pojar argued that he did not breach the EU guidelines in any way and that, on the contrary, he supported them. During his visit to the university, he presented the Czech and EU positions, which are critical of settlement construction. He visited the campus because "Ariel is in the news, and I wanted to see for myself what the situation is, and how the university functions." Pojar added that his country had no relationship with Ariel University.

As stated above, the Czech Republic has never supported Israel unconditionally. In December 2012, it supported adopting the EU foreign ministers' declaration -- an earlier framework for the guidelines issued in July 2013 -- which stated that "all agreements between the State of Israel and the EU must unequivocally and explicitly indicate their inapplicability to the territories occupied by Israel in 1967." The declaration also slammed Israel over its plans to expand settlements beyond the Green Line, especially in the contentious E1 area east of Jerusalem.

After the meeting of ministers, Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg said that "here, we adopted the position that [settlement construction] was worse than a crime -- it is idiocy" and added that it is a "truly great obstacle to a Middle East settlement." These words are hardly an expression of unconditional support for Israel.

As Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University and president of NGO Monitor, pointed out, "The new EU guidelines are evidence of the influence of political NGOs -- some both funded by the EU and involved in the delegitimization campaign against Israel -- on the EU's policies."

In fact, the EU guidelines have established a clear double standard: The EU has one rule for the Jewish state and a different one for other countries. For example, the position adopted by the EU on Israel is inconsistent with those it has taken at the same time in its dealings with Morocco and Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus.

In 2005, Morocco and the EU signed a trade agreement granting European fishermen rights to operate in the waters of Morocco including Western Sahara, even though the EU does not recognize Moroccan sovereignty in this territory. In 1975, the International Court of Justice in The Hague determined that Morocco did not have sovereignty over Western Sahara.

According to the working EU definition of anti-Semitism, approved by the EU Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia in 2004, "Applying double standards to Israel by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation" is an example of new anti-Semitism.

Moreover, in a press statement, NGO Monitor said, "EU guidelines are an attempt to predetermine the outcome of negotiations before the Palestinians even agree to sit at the negotiating table." In other words, the EU both unilaterally and implicitly stipulated that the borders of Israel will be the 1949 armistice lines.

However, these lines are not permanent borders and the 1949 Armistice Agreements state that they "are without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines or to claims of either Party relating thereto."

In addition, the EU guidelines contradict U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which calls for "secure and recognized boundaries." Former Israeli Ambassador Alan Baker argues that the guidelines "negate the EU's own commitments as signatory and witness to the Oslo Accords not to predetermine and undermine specific negotiating issues including the final status of the territories, borders, settlements and Jerusalem."

The EU guidelines -- Obama's Middle East policy, too -- are based on an assumption that the key to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolving the issue of the West Bank settlements, which are seen as the primary obstacle to peace. This assumption is false, and as Israel's Ambassador to the U.N. Ron Prosor once said, "The repetition of the statement also does not make it true."

There was no peace agreement between 1948 and 1967 when not one settlement existed. Several times in the last 20 years, Israel has offered terms that included removal of most settlements. For example, in 2008, Ehud Olmert offered to withdraw from approximately 94 percent of the West Bank. But these deals were rejected by the Palestinians and terror attacks continued.

Most peace plans, including Clinton's, Barak's, Bush's and Olmert's, anticipated that the largest settlements blocks, such as Maaleh Adumim and Ariel -- Ariel University as well -- would remain under permanent Israeli sovereignty under any future agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Current planned construction is concentrated in areas that the Palestinians themselves acknowledge will remain part of Israel in any future peace agreement. Even Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin specified in his last speech to the Knesset, in October 1995, that Israel would never withdraw completely to the 1949 lines.

Moreover, leaked Palestinian negotiating documents – the so-called "Palestine Papers" -- indicate that the Palestinians are prepared to accept that some settlements will be incorporated into Israel as part of a land swap deal. In 2008, former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie said, "Territory is the easiest issue." Despite media claims, such consensus is hardly new. The real obstacles to peace are the Palestinian insistence on the "right of return" and their refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

(3) The Czech Republic gained international attention when it was the only European country to vote against the Palestinian Authority's unilateral statehood bid at the U.N. An unnamed Czech official told me that its vote could have been an effort to secure U.S. support for Alexandr Vondra as a candidate for NATO secretary-general. From a distance, the Czech decision reflects its support for the creation of a Palestinian state in a two-state solution as a result of an Israeli-Palestinian negotiated process and not as a unilateral act.

But has the Czech Republic always voted in favor of Israel at the U.N.-

Just one day after the PA's status was upgraded, another six one-sided U.N. General Assembly resolutions on issues related to the conflict received approval. The Czech Republic abstained on the first three resolutions and supported the remaining ones.

The first resolution dealt with the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People -- is the only committee in the U.N. devoted to a specific people. According to Steinberg, "The committee is anti-Israeli and is active in implementing the Durban agenda of demonization and delegitimization of Israel" and together with other U.N. bodies undermines the Middle East peace process. The second resolution dealt with the Division for Palestinian Rights of the Secretariat. Both of these resolutions promoted an image of Palestinian victimhood while demonizing of Israel.

The third resolution condemned Israel for occupying the Golan Heights, but failed to accurately contextualize the issue, making no mention of the Syrian aggression that led Israel to seize the territory.

The fourth resolution approved a Special Information Program on the Question of Palestine, whose main purpose was to assist the Palestinians with their public relations efforts. This program, by overtly choosing the Palestinian narrative over the Israeli one and disregarding terrorism against Israeli civilians, also had nothing to do with a balanced approach.

The fifth resolution called for Israeli concessions to the Palestinians while ignoring Palestinian violence and incitement toward Israel. U.N. Watch, a Geneva-based nongovernmental organization that monitors the performance of the U.N., has stated that the resolution "serves no effect other than demonization."

The last resolution asserted that Israeli control over Jerusalem was illegal and illegitimate. It implied that the Israeli administration of Jerusalem hindered freedom of religion when, according to U.N. Watch, "in fact the opposite is true -- before 1967, Jordan destroyed Jewish holy sites and denied access to Jews, while under Israel all faiths have access to the city and enjoy full freedoms."

The accusation of unconditional Czech support for Israeli positions is without foundation. The Czech and Israeli governments, though good friends, do not always agree with each other, and feel free to say so, as they should. But the fact that the Czech Republic does support Israel on many issues should come as no surprise and is entirely appropriate.

Jan Kapusnak is a doctoral student at Masaryk University in Brno, the Czech Republic. He holds master's degrees in political science and security and strategic studies from the same university.

טעינו? נתקן! אם מצאתם טעות בכתבה, נשמח שתשתפו אותנו