Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-10-22-Speech-3-225"
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"en.20031022.9.3-225"2
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Mr President, I would first of all like to express my pleasure and thank all the Members who have joined me in making an effort to achieve the consensus in this report, a report with the significant title of ‘Peace and Dignity in the Middle East’. Unfortunately we are far from peace, and humiliation – rather than dignity – is the order of the day in the troubled lands of Israel and Palestine. However, the report we are discussing expresses the aspiration, in its letter and its spirit, that more and more voices, more and more consciences, should be raised here and over there in favour of this twin objective: dignity and peace, to which we can and must add stability for the region and prosperity for its peoples.
It is true, as the report indicates, that it has not been possible to establish a climate of mutual trust between the parties and that recently the enemies of peace have placed obstacles and raised pretexts in the aim of making the Roadmap unworkable, but our duty is to continue trying to achieve it in the immediate, in the medium term and in the long term. Hence the report – at risk of being accused of utopianism – calls on the governments of both parties and those of all the countries in the Middle East to implement a new educational policy based on the notion of education for peace and geared towards promoting mutual tolerance and understanding between the different cultures and religions.
While this is being achieved, however, we must confront the inescapable reality of the situation, and we do so condemning the terrorist violence of Palestinian factions, as well the Israelis’ use of excessive military force against the Palestinian people. Regrettably, the latter consideration is particularly timely at the moment and, I would insist, this is regrettable. As stated in the editorial of the Israeli daily newspaper
and I quote, ‘on Monday, while Sharon was giving an empty speech, lacking any realistic political vision, Israeli helicopters were bombing Gaza, hitting several terrorists, but also killing and injuring many innocent Palestinian civilians’; an odious practice which is not isolated and which, writes
‘the Israeli army has shown that it is going to pursue’. Something, in my view, which leads the editorial writer – a clear product of a democratic society such as Israeli society – to advise the Israeli Government and army that, ‘they must not, through this policy, undermine the ethical standards which Israel has adopted over the years. If this were the case, Israeli society would become seriously divided, since public opinion would stop trusting in their political and military leaders’. Actually, in that speech on Monday, the Israeli Prime Minister claimed before the Knesset to be an ardent advocate of the Roadmap. Though with the 14 amendments presented not to the Quartet, but, unofficially, to the US administration.
Apparently alarmed by the resonance of the so-called Geneva Accord, the peace initiative produced as a result of joint Israeli-Palestinian efforts, Sharon has stated that the Roadmap is the only hope of making progress towards peace with Palestinians. Well, it is time for work. We will rejoice with him if it makes genuine progress. For the moment, however, we will be satisfied if he complies with what the report – on the basis of a consensus – requests from him in paragraph 2: the withdrawal of his army from the autonomous Palestinian territories, an end to selective assassinations and the freezing of all colonisation and of the construction of the security wall.
‘There is no need to sleep to have nightmares’, said a slogan painted on the Berlin Wall. Fourteen years after its destruction, another wall is causing nightmares in Palestine. And while Sharon, in his speech on Monday, said that he had ordered that the wall be speeded up, last night, in the United Nations General Assembly, 144 governments voted to call on Israel to stop it and to backtrack on a construction which the whole planet – apart from Israel and the United States, who voted against – considers a violation of international law.
The report deals with various burning issues. For example, on the basis of the necessary constitution of a viable and democratic Palestinian State, it calls on the Palestinian authorities to deal realistically with the so-called right of return for the refugees, so that a realistic solution can be agreed. Even so, as a European, I would insist – and I will end here – that I naturally entirely support the Roadmap, but the report recommends that, in the event that this Roadmap is deadlocked in the immediate future, and in view of the grave consequences that would have, causing greater suffering for Israelis and Palestinians, new options be provided for, in particular, the establishment of an international mandate under the authority of the Quartet in Palestine, which may even include an international force on the ground."@en1
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