Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-06-19-Speech-2-012"
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"en.20070619.4.2-012"2
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".
Mr President, the most important thing we have to remember here today is the people’s lives that are affected by the new wave of violence in the Palestinian Territories. In particular, we must think of the women and children, whose suffering is not something that has occurred just because of the Hamas takeover in Gaza, or just because of a lack of negotiation between the Palestinian and the Israeli authorities, or just because of the cancellation of aid from the European Union and the US; their suffering goes back 30 years.
Anybody you speak to from the Palestinian area will tell you that it has always been the women and the children who have suffered most, but they have also been the most resilient in trying to find a way forward to challenge the failure to negotiate, the failure to respect and the failure to find a solution; indeed, the failure of both Israel and Palestine to live up to their commitments, to agreements that they voluntarily signed up to, the failure of the United States of America and the European Union to live up to their commitments with regard to clear and open negotiations, the failure of other states bordering Israel and Palestine to take a more proactive and positive role with regard to, ultimately, achieving a two-state solution, which must be based on viability and equality.
Colleagues will remember that, some weeks ago in the European Parliament building in Brussels, the President of Parliament invited a number of Nobel Prize winners to speak on the future of Europe and on areas and issues that they are concerned with. It is quite ironic that, when you read through the speeches of the people who were there that day, who won the Nobel Peace Prize, all of them said that the peace efforts they were involved in only came about through dialogue, respect for diversity, tolerance and equality. What we have seen in Palestine over the last 30 years has been a failure to meet any one of those four criteria.
When Yasser Arafat was the leader of the Palestinian people, Israel said it could not deal with him, it could not negotiate with him. When a new President was brought in, Israel said it could not deal with him, it could not negotiate with him and they were backed up all the time by the Americans and by certain Member States of the European Union. To think that what happened in Gaza with Hamas was an accident is to misread, even with the gift of hindsight, our own failures in the European Union and in the US to deal properly with the solutions that may be required.
Now we have been given a new opportunity to do something. Now we have been given a new opportunity to show courage in the face of death and disaster, to show humanity in the face of oppression and injustice, and to stand up and say what is right and what is correct: that we should give aid to the Palestinian people, we should insist that Israel negotiate with the democratically-elected representatives of the Palestinian people and we should back up the Palestinian Authorities to ensure that the rule of law applies throughout the Palestinian Territories."@en1
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