Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-01-19-Speech-4-017"
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"en.20060119.3.4-017"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, the absence of peace in the Middle East is having increasingly dangerous consequences: threats to destabilise the Palestinian community and risks connected with Iran’s aggressive behaviour, scarcely tempered by anxieties about Syria.
I appreciated the relative optimism of your opening words, Commissioner, but I think that things which go without saying are better said and I would like to help strengthen the grounds for optimism. The media are taking the view that, in the present situation, the disappearance of Ariel Sharon presages disaster and that the outlook is quite frightening. Indeed, Sharon seemed to be the only person capable of seeing through the astonishing process of unilateral partition that he had devised as a preparatory stage to peace.
I really would like to stress that this is no time to panic. Contrary to the impression given by the media, great men do not make history on their own: institutions and situations have their part to play. On the Israeli side, there have for a very long time been two political obstacles to any prospects of peace.
The first is that in the eyes of many Israelis and of Ariel Sharon, all processes of the Oslo, Taba or Geneva kind fail to take adequate account of the imperative of Israeli security. The second is that Israel’s largest right-wing group, Likud, has never, ever, in any way agreed to make the slightest concession whatsoever on its vision of Israel’s future, a vision of Biblical Israel, ‘
or ‘Greater Israel’, on the pretext of exchanging land for peace.
Before he was taken ill, Ariel Sharon had removed both those obstacles. He had removed the first one by making visible and beginning to carry out a plan aimed at achieving peace gradually by partition. Many of us in this Parliament, Commissioner, do not like that plan. Too much violence, not enough talks, and a Palestinian state much reduced in size into the bargain. It is the only plan there is, however, and it has won over many Israelis, because it was the first to marry the absolute imperative of security with the prospect of peace.
The second obstacle was removed because Ariel Sharon had the extraordinary courage to break with Likud. Even if Sharon has gone, a large new party has been born representing a section of the Israeli right that is willing to move towards peace because its mind has been put at rest. Tomorrow, that party may be the dominant force in the Knesset and join with other forces from the centre and the left.
The party’s doctrine and that of its leader Ehud Olmert are not focussed on negotiation, but only on withdrawal from the occupied territories. We know that. Nevertheless, Commissioner, the partisan mechanics of the Knesset can only move in the direction of deepening the split with Likud and of rapprochement with the parties of Amir Peretz and Schlomo Ben-Ami: Sharon or no Sharon, the necessary break has been made and the inevitable will follow.
The Israelis sense this and are showing it in the polls. Not only must we not over-dramatise at this time, we must stand firmly behind this process, because even though the Palestinian community is strongly influenced by Hamas it will quite obviously follow. Peace, Commissioner, is today’s promised land and Moses, too, died before he could enter it."@en1
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"Eretz Israel’"1
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