Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-05-15-Speech-3-138"
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"en.20020515.7.3-138"2
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". – Mr President, I should like to follow very directly what the High Representative has just said, but note at the outset that once again we are faced with reciprocated terror in the Middle East. Israeli civilians were brutally murdered again last week when a suicide bomber blew himself up in Rishon-Le-Zion. I know we all condemn this wholeheartedly. There is no possible justification for such acts. I am glad that Arab leaders are now publicly condemning these terrible suicide bombings. They must end, and Palestinian leaders must, as we have said repeatedly, do all in their power to control and prevent terrorism.
According to the World Bank, the physical damage caused by Israeli military operations to Palestinian infrastructure and institutions amounts to roughly USD 300 million, increasing emergency needs this year to a total of USD 2 billion. The gap between the support already pledged and estimated needs is now approximately USD 800 million.
With the rest of the international donor community, including the United States, we are committed to supporting the Palestinian Authority in its reform and reconstruction efforts.
A team from the Commission is currently conducting an infrastructure damage assessment, and assessing the institutional capacity of the Palestinian authorities and of the municipalities. This report will guide us in our repair and reconstruction efforts. In the short term we need to work on a quick-start package to get administrative services running again. There is a very simple reason for that: with the destruction of computers, records, payrolls and simple accountancy information, unless we are able to put something very quickly in place, I will not be able to come before this House and say that the money we invest in the future of the people of Palestine is money that is being properly spent. So we need something and something quickly in order to establish the bare bones of decent government in Palestine.
In this work we face a serious dilemma. Not just the Palestinians, but the Israelis too, want us to reconstruct infrastructures and institutions which have already been paid for by the international community and destroyed by the Israeli defence forces. How can we be sure that this will not happen again? The answer is that we cannot give that guarantee. However, it is equally the case that I do not believe that we can renege on our responsibilities.
Meanwhile, our resources are stretched to the limit. We are already providing EUR 230 million this year to the Palestinians through the Palestinian Authority, through UNRWA, and in humanitarian assistance. Once the needs assessment is completed, we will come back to inform the House and the Council of the full financial implications and to ask for your help in providing an appropriate European Union response. I want to make this point: reconstruction will not be cheap, and it is not going to be cheap for us to live up to the rhetoric that we have used with passion, eloquence and, I am sure, good intentions. If we are going to live up to what we have promised, it is going to cost money.
Over the past few weeks there have been allegations of misuse of European Union monies by the Palestinian Authority. The Israeli Government has prepared a dossier claiming that Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority secretly used budgetary support provided by the Arab states, Norway and the European Union to finance supporters of terrorism or even directly to fund acts of terrorism. Similar charges have been made about the CIA – so we are in interesting company. These are extremely serious allegations. We are obviously examining them very thoroughly. So far we have found no new evidence of European Union funds being used for purposes other than those agreed between the European Union and the Palestinian Authority. At this stage, the allegations appear to be groundless – rather like the allegations that were made a short while ago about textbooks.
This has been reflected in the tone of media reporting. The first headlines in the European and Israeli press were: "EU finances terror". Now the news stories say only that "EU funds may have been misused inadvertently". These allegations should be seen in the context of efforts to delegitimise President Arafat and the Palestinian Authority and to weaken donors’ support at a time when the international community is putting pressure on Israel to engage in serious negotiations.
We nevertheless take the Israeli allegations extremely seriously, and as I have said, we shall continue thoroughly to examine any evidence of misuse of European Union funds. Such misuse could not be condoned, any more than we can condone Israel’s destruction of EUR 20 million worth of EU-funded projects.
We will ask the Palestinian Authority to cooperate fully in clearing up any allegations regarding the use of European Union funds. We need to be confident that funds are properly used. That is my responsibility to this Parliament, and it is both my responsibility and our responsibility to all European Union taxpayers.
What is needed now is a strong and concerted effort by the international community to reform and rebuild the Palestinian Authority as the legitimate governing body in the Palestinian territories, and as the only valid interlocutor in the forthcoming peace talks, about which the High Representative has spoken.
Violence against civilians can never be justified as an expression of political aspirations or frustrations. We continue to demand that the Palestinians should dismantle terrorist networks and end the armed intifada.
There have been so many debates on the Middle East when we have all expressed our horror at the descent into the abyss and our shared approach to political recovery and the building of a durable peace.
Today, rather than repeat what has been said so often before, and what is widely reported in the media, I thought it right to focus on a practical role that the European Union can and must play as effectively or even more effectively than any one else in constructing a better future.
I just hope that we get the chance to rise to this challenge.
Finally, I should like to associate myself wholeheartedly with the remarks the High Representative made at the end of his speech. Any act of anti-Semitism is intolerable, any act of anti-Semitism should be condemned out of hand in democratic pluralist societies, just as any act of racism anywhere should be condemned. But it is not anti-Semitic to find oneself in disagreement with Mr Ariel Sharon, or with Likud Party resolutions, or with some of the things done by an existing government. I am sure that, like other Members of this House, we all want to see a viable, secure Israeli State living in peace with its neighbours. I find it perverse to suggest that it is anti-Semitic to argue that.
There will be no settlement in the Middle East without the creation of a viable Palestinian state and an Israel that can live securely within recognised borders with the assurance that it will not be overwhelmed by returning refugees. We should also be clear that a Palestinian state will require a return to the 1967 borders, or something very close to them, and it cannot be divided up into parcels of land separated by settlements. Without the creation of such a viable Palestinian state and a State of Israel that is recognised by the entire international community, the madness will continue, children will be murdered, blood will flow. Sunday's decision by Likud against the very idea of a Palestinian state – to which the High Representative referred and which has also been condemned by Mr Peres and others – if maintained against the wish of the whole international community, including the United States Administration, would bring us, in the words of the Israeli Labour Party Chairman Benjamin Ben-Eliezer “to an era of continuing confrontation and bloody battles".
Let me focus for a moment on the Palestinian Authority, as the High Representative did. The Palestinian Administration that rises from the ashes of the old, must be more open, more democratic and more transparent. We have been saying this for a long time and we have actively worked for it together with many Palestinians and the international community. I commend to the House an article in today's
by a Palestinian academic now at Cambridge University in which he sets out the case for reform of the Palestinian Authority extremely clearly. We know that reform is difficult. Look at the brave decisions and periods of hardship that the candidate countries and our Balkan neighbours have endured. But reform there must be. I have no doubt that it can be achieved if the Palestinians can be confident that their institution-building efforts will be rewarded with a state and not with destruction.
The Commission, as Parliament knows, has been funding a project on these reform issues under the chairmanship of Michel Rocard – who is a distinguished Member of this House – and with Henry Siegman as Project Director. That work has already informed the Commission’s efforts to apply strict conditionality to European Union budgetary support. We have been one of the only donors which has attached clear, concrete and tangible conditions to its assistance, obliging the Palestinian Authority to carry out concrete reform measures. For example, firstly, we reinforced transparency in the Palestinian Authority's public finances. Secondly, we helped to consolidate all sources of Palestinian Authority revenue in a single treasury account, which was closely monitored by the International Monetary Fund. Thirdly, we insisted that the Finance Ministry should take full responsibility for managing the Palestinian Authority payroll. We demanded as well a freeze on public sector hiring and a strict ceiling for expenditures under an austerity budget.
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We are already doing a great deal, in other words. But we must redouble those efforts, in order to drive forward a fundamental reform process. I repeat that no one has done more than us in trying to establish reformed, viable and transparent institutions in the Palestinian territories.
We want to see the rapid establishment of a body responsible for the reform process. We want to see the financial control mechanism strengthened. We want to see Palestinian Authority auditors who are answerable to the legislature. We want more detailed reporting on Palestinian Authority budget execution and public debts. We want the development of a unified pension system covering all public employees and we want the integration of the Palestinian Authority’s donor-funded investment budget into the overall budget for 2003, bringing the investment budget under the direct control of the Ministry of Finance. What the High Representative said is absolutely right: the Palestinian Authority has to look and act more like a government, and that covers not only the ordinary areas of government activity but also the security services in particular.
We also want to see a reform of the Palestinian judiciary system. The overdue promulgation of the Law on the Independence of the Judiciary is a condition for further European Union budget support. If this Law is promulgated, we will contribute with technical advice and support for a judicial reform programme helping to instil good governance and respect for the rule of law."@en1
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