Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-06-06-Speech-3-078"
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"en.20070606.13.3-078"2
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Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to begin by saying that exactly a week ago, the Quartet was meeting in Berlin. Since I am sure that you will have read the document that was made public that same evening, you may be aware of our solidarity with the Members of the Palestinian Authority, of the Parliament, who have been detained and, as the President of this Parliament has quite rightly said, with the other people who have been detained against their will in Israeli or Palestinian territories.
I would therefore like to look forward, but I must make a brief comment on this journey, since the areas that I have visited are all areas which are unfortunately not enjoying the best of times at the moment.
In the occupied territories, in Palestine, we are witnessing a difficult situation, with violence amongst Palestinians and also renewed violence between Israel and Palestine. The parties’ appeals for a ceasefire have not been heard, either in Palestine or between Palestine and Israel.
I would like to send an appeal today to everybody with responsibilities in this area for a ceasefire as soon as possible, so that a favourable climate can be created for progressing towards peace.
I had the opportunity to visit Gaza. So did the President of Parliament. Visiting Gaza at the moment is a truly significant experience. This is not the first time I have been to Gaza, but I believe that going there at this point in particular and meeting with the President of the Palestinian Authority was a moral obligation in order not to give the impression that the world has completely forgotten about what is happening in Gaza. Gaza is in a difficult situation, with violence between Palestinians, violence which will lead nowhere if it continues.
The first thing we must do is therefore to try to quell that violence, to bring about a ceasefire, so that the Palestinians can finally begin to work together for a common cause, which is of course peace: peace with their neighbours and peace amongst themselves. We are doing everything we can in relation to that policy, both from my position and from the position of the Commission, which is helping generously.
I would like to tell you that the situation in Palestine, from economic and social points of view, is a dramatic one. I therefore believe that, as soon as this period is over and we can meet again with the political leaders in a clearer and more transparent way, we shall have to think about drawing up a special plan of aid for Gaza. Otherwise we may be faced with a truly difficult situation in Gaza, and it will be difficult to recover for the purposes of a genuine peace process.
I would also like to say that I believe that President Abbas’s solemn appeal yesterday, on the anniversary of the beginning of the 1967 war, deserves to be read and analysed by everybody, because it shows a moral courage that is worthy of note.
I would like to say that I was also in Israel. I met with the Prime Minister, with the Minister for Foreign Affairs, and I was also in Sderot, the area suffering the most Kassam rocket attacks. I also felt it appropriate to express our solidarity European solidarity with all of those suffering any kind of violence, including Kassam rocket attacks.
It was a difficult and tough place to be, but in any event, experiencing it on the ground gives us a clearer picture of what is happening.
In our statement last Wednesday, the members of the Quartet called upon Israel to show restraint.
Mr President, I would like to make a brief statement. I have been asked to speak for no longer than 10 or 15 minutes – I shall try to do so I would like to tell you that I have just returned from a long journey throughout the region, and I have been able to meet with the most important regional leaders and to carry out an analysis of the situation so that I could report also to the Quartet, which met last Wednesday.
Israel is also experiencing a difficult political situation. The primary elections in the Labour Party are not yet over — they are about to conclude — and we shall see what form the next government takes, if there are any changes, after the elections in the Israeli Labour Party.
I would also like to say that the Quartet’s statement contains a clear – and vigorous – appeal for Israel to transfer resources to the Palestinian authorities.
The international community can do a lot, and we are doing a lot in fact. We Europeans are probably doing more than anybody.
The Arab countries have also started to give money to the Finance Minister, Salam Fallad, and today we can say that the possibility is beginning to emerge of creating a budget for the Palestinian National Authority.
Without the transfer of resources from Israel to Palestine, however, there is little else the international community can do. Improving the economic conditions is essentially linked to a transfer of resources from Israel to the Palestinians.
I would like to make a few brief comments on the Quartet and then on Lebanon.
I believe that the meeting of the Quartet last Wednesday in Berlin was, in my experience – and we have belonged to the Quartet for many years since I participated in setting it up – surely one of the most important meetings we have held so far. It was a Quartet in which we were able to give serious thought to how the peace process can be implemented. If you read the final paragraph of the Statement you will see that it truly looks to the future and commits the members of the Quartet to beginning to work hard, in cooperation with the parties – Israel, Palestine and Arab States – to initiate a peace process, to initiate a process with a political outlook.
I would like to inform you that, for the first time in its history, the Quartet is going to make a joint visit to the region, it is going to hold a meeting over the coming weeks with the Palestinians and with the Israelis and it is also going to hold a meeting with the Arab countries, who I believe, with the Arab peace initiative, are also cooperating in the beginnings of a normalisation of life — or the beginning of the possibility of normalisation — in the territories between Israel and Palestine.
I therefore believe that, at this time of dejection amongst many people, of dejection amongst the Palestinians and also within a certain sector of Israeli society, the international community, by means of the Quartet, is reacting in the opposite manner: It is reacting with hope, with the sense that, after forty years, we have the moral obligation to make every possible effort to make progress towards the formalisation of peace, towards a peace process.
I would like to say to you that these coming weeks are going to be absolutely crucial in terms of setting in train a movement that can take us from the current situation to a peace process that leads to peace.
I was pleased to make that trip at more or less the same time as the President of Parliament, with whom I spoke by telephone, and also a distinguished group of MEPs, who have written me a letter to which I have not yet replied. I would like to meet with them personally, because, please believe me, I have not been in Brussels for a single day since then.
It is not so difficult to identify the elements that can lead this process to peace. Almost all of us have a notion of the parameters required in order to achieve peace. What we now need to do is to get to work on it in cooperation with all of the members of the Quartet. I would like to stress that the Secretary-General of the United Nations, the US Secretary of State and the Russian Foreign Affairs Minister were very cooperative with regard to our proposal, and they expressed clear support for the ideas that it was my privilege to present to the Quartet on Europe’s behalf.
We are therefore at an extremely significant crossroads, ladies and gentlemen, in terms of the situation on the ground, but also a positive crossroads in terms of moving towards a peace process that we can begin to see sketched out on the horizon.
Ladies and gentlemen, I cannot let this speaking time that the Presidency has allowed me to go by without saying a few words about Lebanon. Lebanon is once again in a situation of profound crisis. The honourable Members are well aware of this. These are moments of profound significance, and some of them have been going on for some time. From the murder of former Prime Minister Hariri, the whole situation that they experienced over the summer, the current situation of political paralysis, which has become even more serious with the movements that have emerged, with acts of terrorism, in the refugee camps, in two refugee camps, specifically: one in the north and the other in the south.
As you know, the Lebanese army has reacted in a way that I would describe as patriotic, and the support for the Lebanese army from all of Lebanon's political factions has also been patriotic, which is truly extraordinary given the differences that have existed amongst them over recent months, weeks and days.
We also hope and pray that peace will also come to Lebanon, and that the special circumstances that have arisen over recent days — which were also accompanied by the United Nations Security Council’s approval of the International Criminal Court to try the crimes that were committed in Lebanon — will make it possible to reach an agreement amongst all of the political forces in order to unblock the political process in Lebanon. That is what we want, and we are cooperating in the best possible to way in order to see it come about.
Mr President, I shall remain within the speaking time available to me and I would like to end by reiterating what I said at the beginning: we have a moment of hope, a moment that we must be able to exploit, which in one way or another must complete the circle that was begun forty years ago and which we hope to see completed by means of peace, by means of a life lived together by two States — Israel and Palestine. That peace must include the other countries — Syria, Lebanon — so that we can see the re-emergence of a Middle East that can offer more hope to everybody, which is prosperous and which makes a constructive contribution to peace throughout the region.
We Europeans cannot close our eyes to this task and you may rest assured that mine at least will always be open.
I shall see if I can do so so that I can meet with you to talk calmly about the issues that you have raised, which I believe to be extremely important.
Mr President, I believe that this sitting is of particular importance. It is also being held on a very important date for Palestine, for Israel and for the citizens of the world in general, and of the Arab world in particular.
It is currently the 40th anniversary of the outbreak of the 1967 war, the many tragic consequences of which we are still suffering. When we look at the last forty years, it undoubtedly sends a shudder right through us.
They have been forty years of occupation, of suffering on both sides, of violence, during which the citizens – both Palestinians and Israelis – have suffered greatly, and also forty years during which there have been an excess of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.
Given this forty-year situation, we have two opportunities or ways to look at the situation: to look back in order to try to learn lessons regarding mistakes that must not be repeated or to look forward and try to see whether we can learn the most important lesson of all – that the only solution to this conflict that has now lasted for forty years is peace. A rapid peace process that leads rapidly to peace.
There have been many processes, many opportunities for peace have been missed. I believe that we should now all have the will – the will to act, not just the will to think and speak, but the will to act – so that we can truly make peace a reality in those lands that are so dear to many of us and to Europeans in general."@en1
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