Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-02-05-Speech-2-127"
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"en.20020205.6.2-127"2
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"Mr President, High Representative, I too want to welcome the Commissioner, who will shortly be returning to the Chamber. I wish to start by joining with Mr Poettering in what he said on behalf of his group, and also, on behalf of our group, express our thanks for the success of the policy on the Macedonian issue which the High Representative and the Commissioner conducted last summer. The press is, unfortunately, always full of the things that are not going well in Europe, but when a policy is successful, it is virtually ignored.
I want to focus my remarks on the Middle East. I am dismayed by the figures the Commission has published on the destruction recently meted out to projects funded by the European Union. The point here is not the fact that something is being destroyed, but rather the reason why it is being destroyed. The Israeli government is attempting to wreck whatever might become the infrastructure of a future Palestinian state, and that is something we cannot accept.
You were saying today, Mr Solana, that what is going on there is not a peace process. I agree with you wholeheartedly. I have been saying in this House for a year and a half that we should no longer use the word ‘peace process’. It is a low-intensity war, but a war all the same, and our task is to put a stop to it and attempt to restart what will become a peace process. We are, though, still a long way from doing that.
Mr Solana, I fully support your statement that the EU must carry on, for we have no alternative. As has repeatedly been said, though, Israel does not want us as mediators. Perhaps you will again be accepted and welcomed there, with an opportunity we are rarely given to present our policies and our proposals. Are we then to finance projects only to see the Israeli government's tanks destroy them? I also consider the recognition of a Palestinian state to be very important, indeed, as Mr Poettering has said, the only possibility. A President has been elected for this Palestinian state, and that is something Mr Sharon cannot ignore any more than we can. He is the only person we can negotiate with. I do not believe there are many other potential partners in dialogue on the Palestinian side.
I regret, Mr Solana, my inability to share even in your modest optimism. For one and a half years, we have been looking on while two utterly unequal opponents wage war on each other. We look on while Israeli tanks destroy Palestinian homes and kill Palestinian civilians and we also watch as Palestinians kill themselves and take equally innocent Israeli citizens with them. It goes without saying that we condemn all violence and every terrorist act without ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’. Where, though, does it get us? We achieve no progress by it, and so, Mr Solana, we and the Commission as well, have to think in terms of using the powers we have by reason of the association agreement with Israel, even to the extent of suspending it."@en1
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