Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-05-17-Speech-4-268"
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"en.20010517.5.4-268"2
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"It is time for sanctions against Israel, Mrs Lindh.
In today’s edition of the French newspaper
(16 May 2001), one of Israel’s best known pacifists, the writer David Grossman, observes that, if one does not believe in miracles and does not approve of catastrophes, there is only one way to change the situation in the Middle East, namely through ‘international pressure’. He also states that it is Israel, the occupying power, which is mainly responsible and therefore in greatest need of external pressure. Because the United States never does anything that Israel does not like, there is an important international role waiting to be fulfilled in this area. The EU has for a long time been the biggest provider of economic and administrative aid and the most important supporter of the Palestinian Authority. EU politicians have complained that the EU does not play a corresponding political role. Why, then, not take up the gauntlet and do what the United States does not want to do and what both Palestinians and Israeli pacifists are pleading should be done, that is to say bring specific pressure to bear upon Israel?
Formal bases in international law for economic sanctions against Israel are to be found in the shape of those infringements of Israel’s Association Agreement with the EU, demonstrated by the Commission with reference to the fact that goods from unlawful Israeli settlements on occupied land are being sold to the EU with ‘Israel’ cited as the country of origin.
If, now, it really is the case that the EU’s new rapid reaction force does not exist at all to protect the EU’s interests as a superpower but, in fact – and as Mrs Lindh usually maintains – is there simply to be unselfish about making peace in the world, why not propose that it be deployed in the Middle East along the only lawful dividing line between Israel and Palestine, namely the 1967 frontier?
Unfortunately, nothing of this was heard when Mrs Lindh presented the EU’s Middle East policy before the European Parliament today. There were a whole lot of words, but absolutely nothing concrete and nothing which could in any way put an end to the bloodbath and to the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine. The matter is made that much the more tragic by the fact that Sweden’s own voice on the subject of Palestine has gone completely silent. The work of the former Foreign Minister, Mr Andersson, is being carried on not by Mrs Lindh but by her Danish colleague, Mr Lycketoft, who now talks in no uncertain terms about Israel’s violation of human rights and of international law. Both in her capacity as EU President and as Swedish Foreign Minister, Mrs Lindh appears, rather, to have capitulated before those forces which do not dare to stand up to Israel and the United States. That is deplorable."@en1
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