Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-09-04-Speech-2-048"
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"en.20010904.2.2-048"2
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". – Madam President, if I may offer one brief reflection on that last question, I cannot believe that anybody would seriously refuse to see my friend and colleague, Dr Solana. Nobody has done more than Dr Solana to try to move forward the peace process in the Middle East and today and on other occasions Parliament has paid proper tribute to the role that he has played in the Middle East as the representative of the European Union.
It is important that UNWRA is running a substantial tolerance and awareness programme in its schools to counteract any negative influence on the pupils, but it cannot be very easy for a teacher in the camps to be teaching children about tolerance and awareness when they go out of the camp in the evening and see tanks and guns and stone throwing. Teaching a tolerance and awareness programme in those camps must be one of the most difficult jobs in the world.
I beg honourable Members who take up rather partisan positions on these matters to think of those who are working day after day in the camps and elsewhere in the Middle East to promote decency, to promote the sort of values which we share in this chamber. I do not think that rather cheap attacks on what is being done by UNWRA and by others are the sort of thing that one should hear in this Parliament.
Finally, I would like to say something about Mr Lagendijk's speech, because I normally agree with the honourable gentleman. He makes some of the most thoughtful and interesting and well-informed contributions to our debates. Of course, we all have the ambition to take steps on behalf of the European Union that would make a bad situation in the Middle East better.
It is, of course, possible for us to contemplate or take steps that would make a bad situation worse. The honourable Member talks about economic measures. It is true that we have a very important economic relationship with both Israel and with the Palestinian Authority and with the other states in the region. I am not unaware of the consequences of that relationship in political terms. We are trying to ensure, as I have said before, that the assistance that we provide for the Palestinian Authority promotes pluralism, promotes clean government, promotes an independent judiciary, promotes the rule of law and promotes democracy. That is what we should be doing.
We are also insisting with the Israeli authorities that our agreements with them are honoured to the letter as well as to the spirit – that is what we said to them during our discussions at the customs cooperation meeting in July. But I have the gravest doubts about going beyond that. The record of economic sanctions in international affairs is not – alas – a very happy one. I have great respect for the honourable Member's views and I am sure that we can exchange further thoughts about this issue, but I would need a great deal of persuasion that we should start talking the language of sanctions in trying to frame a more effective policy for the European Union in the Middle East.
It is easier, of course, to see how our relationship with the parties might consolidate peace in the longer term than to see how the economic relationship could advance peace in the shorter term. I understand the frustration, but nevertheless I remain doubtful about the ability to use economic sanctions.
It has been an interesting debate, focusing on some familiar and central themes. There have been some disagreements, but by and large it is fair to say that most Members take the same view of the situation and there has been perhaps a shared sense of frustration about how we can best contribute to resolving this appalling and deteriorating situation. Obviously we are going to come back to the subject again and again in the coming weeks and we will be able to respond to some of the very positive suggestions made in this debate. For example the suggestion made by Mr Galeote about the resources available to Ambassador Moratinos, who has been doing such an outstanding job.
I should like to comment on the speeches made Mr Zimeray and Mr Laschet and I will do so with all the diplomatic restraint for which I am famed, not least in Asia. Over the last two years I have had the great pleasure and privilege of listening to hundreds of speeches in this Chamber, probably more than any other Commissioner. I am bound to say that I have not heard many speeches less well informed than Mr Zimeray's. I would wish that Mr Laschet's speech had been a little better informed as well.
I know of no serious commentator on the Middle East who argues that we would all be better served if the Palestinian authority was brought to its knees. Most Members of this Parliament are aware of the Commission's efforts to make sure that the European support for the Palestinian authority is money that is properly spent, well spent and spent in ways that help to promote pluralism, the rule of law and clean government in the Palestinian territories. I am surprised that the honourable gentleman did not know that, before we make each month's payment, we have to have the seal of approval of the International Monetary Fund to ensure that the money voted by this Parliament is being spent in a sensible way.
These are all issues we have discussed at great length with Parliament, which has been rightly concerned to ensure that European taxpayers' money is spent properly, transparently and to good purpose. I would be delighted to come back to this subject again in the future, but I want to underline that point today because I do not think it is helpful when Members of this House give the impression we are not spending European taxpayers' money sensibly.
I also want to deal with a subject which I have dealt with again and again. Perhaps if I talk about it once more today, I will be able to save one or two honourable Members who have not yet got the point from raising it in correspondence and in speeches in Parliament in the future. It is repeatedly suggested, not least in some sections of the Israeli press, that the European Union has been implicated in funding Palestinian schoolbooks which contain anti-Semitic passages.
I want to be very clear on this. None of the projects in support of the Palestinian authority, none of the projects in support of UNRWA financed by the European Commission, include the production or distribution of school textbooks. It is true that this year, for example, we have contributed EUR 35 million to the UNRWA's EUR 170 million education budget. I would just like to point out that we are not the largest contributor to that budget. The largest contributor is the United States and I do not think anybody is suggesting that by contributing to the education budget of UNRWA the United States is guilty of the things with which we are charged in the Commission. Assistance to the educational system is focused on infrastructure, equipment and direct assistance for current school expenses, such as salaries for teachers. It would hardly help to contribute to security in the Palestinian territories if teachers were being laid off in large numbers because nobody could afford to pay them.
Furthermore, no request has ever been made to us by the Palestinian authority to finance curricula or textbooks. We reject any attempt to use the educational system as a vehicle to promote intolerance and to hinder the efforts by the parties still committed to peace in the Middle East. It is particularly regrettable in this context that school children may be exposed to intolerance by the parties involved in the conflict.
The Commission has always and will always continue to focus its assistance on promoting a culture of peace, tolerance and human rights in the Middle East. Recent studies of Palestinian books have shown that anti-Semitic language contained in old Egyptian and Jordanian textbooks used by the Palestine authority and UNWRA, particularly before 1994 and 1995, is being removed. These new books, rightly or wrongly, have been criticised for not conveying a clear message of peace and friendship with the Israeli people. I wish they did convey such a message. However, textbooks are not going to change the tragic reality of daily life in the Palestinian territories or in the Palestinian camps."@en1
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