Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-09-06-Speech-3-151"
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"en.20060906.21.3-151"2
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".
Mr President, Mr Tuomioja, Mrs Ferrero-Waldner, what we have experienced this summer ought to be totally and utterly inconceivable in our time.
Let us recall, firstly, that a State, Israel, is shelling and starving the civilian population of Gaza, is kidnapping ministers and politicians, who are going to join the 8 000 Palestinian prisoners already in detention, and has killed more than 200 people in this small region, which has become, according to the expression used by Mr Jan Egeland, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, a ticking time-bomb. Then, the same army has been pounding Lebanon for a full 34 days, making no distinction, according to Human Rights Watch, between civilians and military targets, causing the deaths of 1 100 civilians, forcing a quarter of the population to move, imposing a total blockade of the country, deliberately targeting – as Mr Annan pointed out – and killing observers from the international peacekeeping force, destroying – according to the UNDP – 15 000 houses and 78 bridges, demolishing the country’s vital infrastructure, ports, airports and power stations, causing a huge oil slick, and using shells that can contain as many as 644 explosive devices, with 100 000 of these devices continuing to blindly kill men, women and children.
Secondly, a superpower, the United States, is supporting its ally’s strategy, both in Palestine and Lebanon, in the name of the war against terrorism, which is already underway in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its Secretary of State compares the suffering of the people of Lebanon to the pain of giving birth to the new Middle East. In the midst of war, she is delivering increasingly sophisticated weapons to Israel and has been refusing, for more than a month of relentless fighting, to call for a ceasefire, something that the Lebanese Government and the United Nations Secretary-General have nonetheless been passionately calling for.
My third and final point is that an institution that is particularly close to us, the Council, has long proved itself incapable of calling for a ceasefire despite the commendable attempt made by the Finnish Presidency and the unanimous appeal launched along these lines by Parliament’s Conference of Presidents. The Council is even finding excuses for the Israeli army’s behaviour by speaking of the right to self-defence. Just as it was legitimate to condemn the initial capture of the Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah, then above all the latter’s serious decision to respond to the bombing of Lebanese towns by launching missiles on Israeli towns, thus in turn committing crimes against the civilian population, the green light that has
been given to Israel for many days now to carry out and pursue this terrifying war is leaving people amazed and is fuelling revolt.
We therefore cannot be content today and in the period to come with only talking about European contributions to UNIFIL and to the reconstruction process, as important as these two issues are. By adopting a clear-sighted approach and in a spirit of responsibility, we must learn lessons from this painful experience, beginning with the following: at the heart of all the upheavals in the Middle East, which are becoming more tragic for the populations and more dangerous for international security as each day passes, there is the occupation of the territories that were conquered in 1967 and Israel’s persistent refusal to see the relevant United Nations’ Security Council resolutions applied.
The fact is that the European Union has taken the pressure off with regard to this crucial requirement for peace. What initiative has it taken to relaunch the Quartet’s road map? What did it do to promote the Arab League’s plan in 2002, which was proposing the normalisation of relations with Israel in exchange for recognition of the Palestinian State? What has it done to make the Israeli leaders face up to their historical responsibilities? Instead of doing anything in those areas, it has suspended aid to the Palestinian institutions, delegitimised a democratically-elected government and parliament, shunned the courageous efforts of President Mahmoud Abbas to rebuild a national accord and accepted without any difficulty the closure of the only crossing points between Gaza and the outside, which it was officially controlling.
I hope that the joint decisions taken over the last few days will signal a turnaround for Europe with regard to the entire Middle East. At present, Europe must make the long-term choice between President Bush’s notion of the war against terrorism and a return to the fundamentals of international law. I believe that a fair and lasting peace in the Middle East comes at that price, as does Europe’s credibility in the world."@en1
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