BDS is a sinister hoax with genocidal objective

These EU policy initiatives are ostensibly based on the 1980 Venice Declaration which stressed that:

(i) Israel needed to end its territorial occupation of the West Bank

(ii) Israeli settlements constituted a serious obstacle to the peace process in the Middle East.

(iii) Jewish settlements established there, as well as modifications in population and property, were illegal under international law.

The EU position on the illegality of those Jewish settlements has now been totally discredited following the recent decision by Norway's largest pension fund, KPL, to sell its shareholdings in Heidelberg Cement AG and Cemex SAB de SV, whose two Israeli subsidiaries are currently operating quarries established after 1967 in Area C of the West Bank.

Under the 1995 Oslo Accords Israel has sole civil and security control in Area C comprising 60% of the West Bank where no more than 4% of the West Bank's Arab population currently lives.

KPL first sought advice on the legal situation pertaining in the West Bank from the Oslo-based International Law and Policy Institute (ILPI), an independent institute focusing on good governance, peace and conflict, and international law.

The advice completely refutes the EU's long held position.

Senior ILPI Partner Gro Nyusten, former Norwegian Foreign Affairs staffer, former Associate Professor of International Humanitarian Law/the Law on Armed Conflict at the University of Oslo, from 2008 Associate Professor at the Defence Staff University College in Oslo and former chair of the Council on Ethics of the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global, advised KPL that:

(i) international law does not provide "unambiguous answers"

(ii) it was "highly probable" that the operation under Israeli licence of the subject quarries was inconsistent with the requirements of the law of belligerent occupation

(iii) a case on quarrying activities in Area C went all the way to the Israeli Supreme Court but was rejected because the court concluded that it raised issues that could only be resolved through political channels and not through the court