Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-11-15-Speech-3-175"
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"en.20061115.14.3-175"2
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"Mr President, more than 300 people have been killed in Palestine since June. The diplomatic term for this is ‘disproportionate response’. Wherein lies the disproportion? It lies in the fact that ten Palestinians have been killed for each Israeli during this second intifada, and 100 to one since the Lebanese war. There is therefore a lack of proportionality. The fact is, however, that each of these deaths is pointless.
At present, the highest international bodies – both the UN and the Quartet – appear paralysed in the face of the United States. Europe should therefore do what it has done in Lebanon and adopt a position that is strong and unanimous, as is today’s joint resolution by Parliament. It should therefore use all the political tools at its disposal, including the Association Agreement with Israel, in order to put an end to the violence. This violence condemns all Palestinians to death, but it also condemns Israeli democracy. It puts an end to democracy in Israel, whose government has just allied itself with a xenophobic partner which supports ideas of ethnic cleansing.
Let us be at least as brave as those Israelis who invoke justice and international law in writing to us today of their horror at the massacres in question. I am thinking in particular of the courageous signatories of the manifesto published by the main Israeli human rights organisations, which are demanding an end to the stranglehold placed on Gaza. That is why I call for the blockade on Gaza to be lifted and for aid to Palestine to be resumed, as well as for support to be given to the government of national unity that is about to be formed. This would be a victory by moderates against extremists on all sides.
I am also concerned about the Israelis possibly using new weapons of destruction in this dirty war – weapons whose use has already been suspected in Lebanon – and I call for an international inquiry to be launched in this connection. I support the idea of an international peace conference, bringing together all the players in the Middle East including Syria and Iran and, in common with the editorial in the newspaper
I call for an international intervention force to be sent to Gaza.
Finally, I would urge the European Union to seize every opportunity for peace in this explosive situation. Death and famine are emphatically not fertile ground for peace. We do not bear every responsibility in this crisis, but we do have responsibilities. I would venture to say that, by interrupting aid to Palestine prematurely and by putting in place an intermediate mechanism that has taken some time to be implemented, we have helped bring about the prevailing chaos in Palestine. To each his particular task, certainly, but we have mistakes to remedy and responsibilities to assume."@en1
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