EU funding to Israeli military companies and institutions trough Horizon2020

Israeli military, police and settler violence against Palestinians is intensifying quickly. Over the past week, at least 900 Palestinians have been injured, at least 60 with live fire. Only on Saturday October 10th, six Palestinians in Gaza were shot dead by Israeli soldiers who opened fire on a demonstration. These peaks in lethal violence are a part of the systematic violence Palestinians are subjected to under Israel’s Apartheid regime

Aside from maintaining this siege and engaging in direct military attacks on Gaza, the Israeli army’s primary ongoing task is to enforce the Occupation of the Palestinian land and people. Israeli arms companies benefit enormously from European Union expenditure. With a total budget of nearly €80 billion, Horizon 2020, the new EU research and innovation programme, is one of the world’s largest research and innovation programmes. Israel is associated to Horizon 2020 allowing Israeli entities to participate in the programme. Already during the previous funding cycle (FP7), Israeli entities participated in over 1500 projects.

On February 9th 2015, the Israeli R&D Directorate for the European Research Area (ISERD) published a document announcing that the EU had already approved 205 projects with Israeli participation with a total value of €452,3m1 within the Horizon 2020 research cycle.

Participating companies include Elbit, Israel Aerospace Industries, Technion, deeply implicated in the occupation of Palestine and Israeli military industry. Elbit is a partner in EU Flysec projects funded by the European taxpayer’s money totalling 4 141 375 EUR.

Palestinian and European civil society has mounted sustained campaigning efforts to pressure the EU not to use taxpayers’ money to finance Israeli occupation, apartheid and colonialism through its funding cycles.