Sanctimonious Decreptitude

"I would expect that anyone for whom stability and peace in the region is really important to find time to discuss this issue after resolving more urgent problems such as the civil war in Syria and Iran's race to achieve nuclear weapons.
"We will not accept any external edicts about our borders."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

"This has always been their position and they're entitled to their position. But now they're trying to ram their position down our throats and that's not acceptable to any Israeli government."
"The ultimate result will be tighter and deeper relations between Israel and North America; and Israel and Asia; but fewer and fewer agreements and contacts and exchanges with the EU. It's not that Israel will decree a boycott but the European attitude shows us how they feel about us. They will lose influence and presence in Israel gradually."
Senior Israeli official

The EU decision represented a "very significant and worrying move. It certainly doesn't add to the atmosphere of peace talks. On the contrary, it fuels the Palestinian refusal to return to the negotiation table."
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Zeev Elkin

Effective Friday, the European directive informs that any contract between EU member countries and Israel, must include a clause confirming awareness that areas post-1967 borders enclosed within Israel's wider borders are excluded from any kind of funding through EU auspices. Not that the EU gives direct funding to Israel; it funds research institutes and civil-society projects along with joint Israeli-Palestinian meetings to the value of tens of millions each year.

Almost $40-billion of imports and exports passed in a bustling trade between Israel and the European Union in 2011. The European Union is currently Israel's largest trading partner. That trade is ongoing, but it is confined to the pre-1967 borders only, in what the EU recognizes as Israel's legitimate borders, exclusive of east Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and parts of the West Bank. And it relates to any economic, social or academic arrangement with an Israeli institution that operates beyond the pre-1967 borders.

"These are worrying steps which we view as double standards because we don't see the EU take similar steps ion other territorial disputes", added Yuval Steinitz, Israel's minister for intelligence and strategic affairs, accusing the EU of singling Israel out. "These are guidelines that reinforce already existing policy. All agreements with the EU apply to Israel proper and not to the occupied territories. We believe that 'settlements' are illegal under internatiional law despite Israel's claim of sovereignty there", responded an official with the EU.

Israel, it should be noted is a financial-industrial powerhouse, moving steadily ahead in its advancement in economic success.  It has signed free trade agreements with Latin America, the only non-Latin American country to do so. It has also signed free trade agreements with the NAFTA North American countries, and is in the process of signing a free trade agreement with China. The EU is still awaiting a free trade agreement with Canada, and with the United States.

The EU euro countries have fallen on hard times, with high unemployment figures and a fairly sad outlook for their financial futures. Many of them, like Portugal, Greece, Spain, Ireland and Italy are struggling with an enormous debt and deficit, having to cut back on social programs, and experiencing huge public backlash, as a result.

Israel has an unemployment rate of 6.9% and is looking to decrease it to 6.5 in the near future. In contrast, Germany aside, most EU countries are suffering high unemployment rates; Greece and Spain are both well over 26%, and their youth workers are even worse off. But then, the EU has a reputation of meddling in the affairs of other countries and sanctimoniously calling them to order.

It's become a truly unfortunate habit, one not particularly designed to endear them to the rest of the world, nor to hasten their departure from global bankruptcy, both moral and economic.

Some exotically political pundits would have it that there is more to this situation than meets the eye. That John Kerry's peripatetic trips to and from the Middle East to bring a peace solution to fruition is somehow involved. That the Obama administration has manipulated the EU to this ploy as increased pressure from yet another source on Israel toward compliance.