Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-06-19-Speech-2-010"
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"en.20070619.4.2-010"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, although we have to regard the events of the past few days as representing a nadir in the development of the region, I would see it also as representing a nadir in our own – the European Union’s – role in its dealings with the Middle East. Yesterday, the Council of Foreign Ministers decided to resume sending aid. Why, though, did they wait to do that until after civil order had broken down?
You, Mr President, have just called for the payment of direct aid to Mahmud Abbas. I would ask whether it might be the case that it is too late for that. Is it not perhaps possible that the disintegration of civil order in the Gaza Strip – which is what is happening now – might have been prevented if the aid had been sent earlier on, and if we had not imposed on ourselves, as a matter of strategy, the rule that there were to be no talks with Hamas?
I do not myself know the answer to that question, and we are certainly not in a position to say that things would have worked out better if we had acted differently, but it is a question that we must at least be allowed to ask.
Is it not also the case that we – that is to say, the European Union and the community of Western states – are now, once again, seeing that there is a process at work, whereby a people elects a government that we do not like the look of; we are happy with the elections – which our electoral observers confirm were unobjectionably conducted – but not with the result that emerged from them, and so we come to the conclusion that what is needed is a blockade, and a complete one at that. Why was it that we did not actually talk to those members of the government of national unity who are not members of Hamas? There were many members of the government who were not members of Hamas, or of Fatah either. The forces with whom we find ourselves talking may not, for the moment, be to our liking, but dialogue is nevertheless the only way to reach peaceful solutions.
I can remember – as you all can – how, when I was a young man, Yasser Arafat was seen as the world’s number one terrorist; the man was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. I was in favour of engaging in dialogue with him. History has shown that it was dialogue that provided a way out of violence. Today, Fatah is regarded as one of our partners; it was once seen as the terrorist organisation
That is why we have to learn from our own mistakes.
If we consider things as they actually stand, then there is only one way we can go – that is what I still believe, that is what my group still believes, that is what the social democratic family of parties still believes – and it is that we have to try to get all the stakeholding forces and all the interested parties around one table. Anyone who talks to Syria is treated as an outcast, yet we ourselves know that the time will come and is not far off when there will be negotiations between it and Israel. Preparations for them are already in hand. We know that the Israeli Government, over the past year, has tried to establish contact with Syria. Let us be a bit more honest and say, yes, it goes without saying that Syria should have a place at the conference table, particularly if you want to have some influence over Hamas.
There is surely no point in only looking back at the past. We have to provide whatever direct aid we now can. I do not know whether there is any chance of exerting some influence in the Gaza Strip, but, if there is, what this aid needs to be used for above all else is the creation of a state infrastructure, with support for the security forces who are actually making things safe rather than bringing insecurity, but most of all – and this is something about which not enough has been said in the debates over recent days – we in the European Union have to ensure that humanitarian aid is provided, for what we are now seeing happening is, among other things, a people who are already in need having – and not for the first time – yet more misery inflicted on them by radicalised armed forces on the fringes of society. The people who really suffer are the ordinary people who have no water supply, no electricity, no medical care, and cannot send their children to school, and it is only as and when we are able to deal with those things that we will get people to want Israel to have the security that it needs in order to be able to live in peace, for one thing that is plain to see is that it will not be able to live in greater security if people become even more radicalised and civil war breaks out. That will make only for even more instability. The fundamental precondition for social security is always that we can extend it and thereby create in a given region greater willingness to make peace. That is what the European Union’s main task must be, rather than the sending of European troops, which is what I have heard advocated by not a few representatives of this Union of ours over the past few days. It is not conceivable that, for political reasons, there should be no money available to send humanitarian aid, but that the funds are there when it comes to sending troops. That it is, in any case, not our way of doing things. I hope that it will prove possible to resume the dialogue in the Middle East."@en1
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