Israel is not backing down from a settlement expansion plan, announced following the United Nations vote providing Palestine with nonvoting observer-state status, despite a loud protest over the plan from five European Union countries.
On Monday, the U.K., France, Sweden, Denmark and Spain all summoned Israel's ambassadors to their countries in protest of Israel's decision to construct 3,000 new housing units in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and to begin planning for a long-frozen development project in a particularly sensitive area of the West Bank known as E1.*
Sharon Pardo, Jean Monnet Chair in European Studies and a senior lecturer at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Tel Aviv, Israel, told Trend Lines that the forcefulness of the Europeans' complaints came as a surprise to Israel.