Avigdor Lieberman. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – On Friday, the Official Journal of the European Union published its guidelines stating that all future agreements with Israel will apply only to areas within Israel’s pre-1967 lines and that funding will be withheld from projects outside those lines, including Jewish neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem. The guidelines go into effect on Jan. 1, 2014.

Israeli Embassy officials in Brussels who are charged with maintaining contact with the EU tried to fish out certain details of the document weeks before it was published, but to no avail. Sources in Brussels said that a small coterie of diplomats in the European Commission’s Middle East Department denied anyone access to the document.

“They worked in great secrecy,” a source told Israel Hayom.

Avigdor Lieberman, chairman of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said, “Someone needs to explain to [the EU] that there are other, more pressing matters that they should busy themselves with.” Lieberman has suggested excluding the EU from anything having to do the peace process and discontinuing all contact with it on the Palestinian issue, and Deputy Foreign Minister Zeev Elkin echoed that sentiment.

“If we don’t put a stop to this, we have to consider whether we are interested in Europe’s involvement [in the peace process],” Elkin said.