Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-07-Speech-3-157"
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"en.20050907.18.3-157"2
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"Mr President, I welcome the success of the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and from the four isolated settlements in the northern West Bank and welcome Mr Sharon's public assurances that these moves form the first stages of the United States-led roadmap to a two-state solution.
The withdrawal has also been welcomed by the Muslim world as a first phase of a process. The significance of this development was displayed last week by the first public talks between the Foreign Ministers of Israel and Pakistan. The European Council, under the Presidency of the United Kingdom, must maximise its special relationship with the US to make joint efforts to add to the existing ties with other Muslim countries, such as Egypt, Jordan and Turkey, to name but a few.
Such political progress will have tremendous significance, not just as regards relations between these two states, but as a stepping stone towards a normalisation of relations between Israel and the whole of the Muslim and Arab world. Indeed, it will help in our very own action plan to face head-on the issue of terrorism within our own borders.
However, worrying messages continue to come out of Israel. As recently as July, for example, the Knesset approved Amendment 5 to the Civil Wrongs Law. The amendment prohibits Palestinians from suing for damages for injuries sustained as a result of illegal Israeli gunfire; this is in clear violation of basic human rights. This week, there is a rare opportunity to begin rectifying these injustices.
All this exacerbates Israel's persistent defiance of the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice of 9 July, which heavily criticised the illegal separation wall in Eastern Jerusalem. Incidentally, mention of the wall was noticeable by its absence from the UK Presidency's
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May I remind the Council that the ICJ's opinion articulates obligations incumbent on the whole of the international community to see that any impediment resulting from the construction of the wall to the exercise by the Palestinian people of its right to self-determination is brought to an end.
Peace cannot be achieved without justice and it is justice for the individual – the men, women and children living this conflict on a daily basis – which is the key to lasting peace. It is these individuals' right to self-determination which must be secured.
The EU, as Israel's principal trading partner, is in a unique position to utilise the human rights clause in the EU-Israel Association Agreement and bring pressure to bear on the Israeli Government to comply, specifically with the ICJ opinion, and more generally to ensure that disengagement is followed by credible political process where outstanding claims for justice under international humanitarian law are resolved.
In conclusion, if the European Council, under the leadership of the UK Presidency, is to play a significant and constructive role in the peace process, it must ensure that concerns of economic and political expediency are not permitted to override the fundamental rights of a people that has suffered enough."@en1
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"Prospects for the EU in 2005"1
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