Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-04-Speech-4-203"
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"en.20030904.6.4-203"2
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"Mr President, last July I tabled an oral question to the Commission on renewing the scientific and technical cooperation agreement with Israel. In substance the reply said that the Commission believed that the development of relations with Israel would make a significant contribution to the Middle East peace process. You have said more or less the same thing to us today, Mr Nielson. Although I share the idea that knowledge and an exchange of knowledge help build a better world, in the same ways as economic cooperation, I am particularly stupefied by this answer. Indeed, this position completely disregards the Parliament’s Resolution of April 2002, of which it is obviously right to remind you here given the general title of the debate. We all know that in paragraph 8 of the Resolution, Parliament asked the Council and the Commission to urgently convene the association council to give its position to the Israeli Government, by asking the latter to respect the UN resolutions, and, in this context, called for the suspension of the Association Agreement.
Where are we, a year and a half after this demand was worded? When the Agreement began in 1995, just after the process in Oslo, some regarded it as helping to build peace. The situation now, however, is radically different. What type of cooperation is the Commission talking about? Partnerships can only be devised on the basis of mutual trust, and of shared rights and obligations. Now, the criminal attitude of the Israeli Government shows every day that it not only flouts the concerns of the Union, but also that it outbids the other in this fatal situation. More than a year ago now, Israel erected a wall in the West Bank allegedly for reasons of safety. In actual fact, it is an iron curtain that massacres the Palestinian territories and drives tens of thousands of inhabitants in their homes. In this way, new territories are being annexed.
It is time to give Parliaments’ Resolution tangible form. There are precedents. In 1990 the Commission enforced Parliament’s recommendation that scientific cooperation be partially frozen until the Palestinian schools and universities that had been closed unilaterally by the Israeli authorities were completely reopened and remained so. It was at least a few months before it was possible for them to reopen. Today, given that the clause on the respect of fundamental rights has been brutally violated, and in the sight of the whole world, in what way is this demand for suspension excessive?
In what way is it excessive to ask that this law is applied and respected?
Finally, and I conclude Mr President, I am aware that the responsibility of the Council, shamefully absent today, is enormous. As, in theory, a member of the quartet, the Union has the means to carry weight. What it lacks is the political will to do so."@en1
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