Message from the Department of External Relations of the (DFLP) to Political Parties and Civil Society Organizations Worldwide

In recent months, there has been a relative increase in European and broader Western measures addressing crimes committed in the occupied West Bank. Several states, alongside the European Union, have imposed sanctions on Israeli settlers, organizations, and companies linked to the settlement enterprise. These measures have included asset freezes, travel bans, restrictions on financial transactions, and other punitive actions in response to violations of international law, including forcible displacement, land confiscation, the killing of civilians, attacks against Palestinians, and actions undermining the viability of the two-state solution.
While these measures constitute a long-overdue acknowledgment of Israeli violations, they remain far below the obligations imposed by international law. They are limited to sanctioning a small number of individuals and organizations while ignoring the responsibility of the occupying Power and its official institutions, which plan, legislate, finance, and protect the settlement enterprise. Settlement construction is not the result of isolated actions by individual settlers; it is a systematic government policy implemented as part of an official project aimed at imposing de facto annexation and undermining the Palestinian people›s right to self-determination. This requires holding the State itself accountable, rather than merely prosecuting individual perpetrators.
Reports issued by the United Nations and leading international human rights organizations have consistently confirmed that the Israeli military not only fails to prevent settler violence but also provides protection to settlers and actively participates in killings, arrests, forced displacement, house demolitions, and land seizures. Restricting sanctions to settlers and settlement organizations therefore has the practical effect of shielding the Israeli State from its legal and political responsibility, allowing it to continue its policies of settlement expansion and annexation without facing meaningful legal consequences.
This approach also raises serious questions regarding the consistency of European and Western policies. It is contradictory to acknowledge the illegality of settlements and warn against the erosion of the two-state solution while, at the same time, maintaining political, military, and economic cooperation with Israel, preserving partnership agreements and trade privileges, and continuing arms transfers that directly or indirectly enable the continuation of these violations.
The responsibility of European and Western states does not end with condemning violations or imposing limited sanctions. International law requires them to take effective measures to bring to an end the unlawful situation created by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory, in accordance with their obligations not to recognize as lawful situations resulting from serious breaches of international law, nor to render aid or assistance in maintaining them.
Accordingly, while the Department of External Relations of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine welcomes every European and international measure that contributes to holding perpetrators of crimes against the Palestinian people accountable, we stress that justice cannot be achieved by sanctioning a limited number of individuals while leaving the occupying Power and its institutions beyond accountability.
What is now required is a transition from a policy of partial sanctions to one of comprehensive accountability. This should include legal, political, and economic measures directed at Israel and its official institutions; the suspension of forms of cooperation that contribute to the continuation of the occupation and settlement enterprise; an end to arms transfers used in the commission of violations; and the implementation of obligations arising from United Nations resolutions and the advisory opinions and decisions of the International Court of Justice. Such measures are essential to ending the occupation, dismantling the settlement regime, and enabling the Palestinian people to exercise their inalienable right to self-determination and to establish their independent State on the territories occupied since 4 June 1967, with Jerusalem as its capital.
Without holding the occupying Power itself accountable, limited sanctions will remain incapable of addressing the root causes of the conflict or ensuring respect for international law.