EU: New settlements, Gaza Siege, targeted assassinations acts of war, not peace

Saturday December 08, 2007 05:25 by EU press release

According to the European Union, the few hopes raised by the Annapolis summit have been dashed by the Israeli policy of collective punishment and senseless fire of rockets by Palestinian extremist groups.

EU

The following is a statement by LUISA MORGANTINI, Vice President of the European Parliament:

"All this came immediately after Annapolis, which by the way was not making a final negotiation but only a joint statement for negotiations. The Israeli Government did not lose time, and announced the expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied East Jerusalem, and every day Palestinians are being killed by the Israeli army or undercover units: in the last week 27 Palestinian people were killed  by the Israeli raids in Gaza Strip and many others in the West Bank.

And what about closures, check points, confiscation of lands, no freedom to move for wounded and ill people both in West Bank and in Gaza Strip, and again many  Palestinians arrested who join the more than 11 thousand political prisoners? Are these words and acts for peace?

No. The Israeli plan to build more than 300 new homes in Har Homa, a settlement built after the Oslo agreement on the confiscated land of villages next to Bethlehem, like Beit Sahour, and considered by the annexation policy of Israel part of the "Great Jerusalem", is dramatically bound to destroy newly revived peace talks held in Annapolis and also the next meeting which should be hold on 12th December.

Before what it is now the ugly cement block of the settlement, there was a fantastic beautiful green hill, Palestinians called it Jabal Abu Ghneim. Now, the new constructions, that are not even a demographic necessity due to growing of population of the settlement since many houses already built still remain unsold and empty, represent a true act of war.

The only way to create a sustainable peace and to end the 40 years of Israeli military occupation on the West Bank and Gaza is to show concrete deeds and acts producing real changes in daily life of the Palestinians.

The Israeli Government declares to want peace, and we want to believe it, but from what we can see it does the contrary, continuing to follow the way of violence and illegality and forgetting that in the Annapolis Conference both actors agreed to base their negotiations on the road map where the freeze of all settlements' growing and the end of violence are stated.

The current Israeli Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, who didn't share Rabin's choices in Oslo, continues now to do the opposite of what Annapolis Conference would like to publicize, preparing a massive military aggression plans against the Gaza Strip and declaring that settlements in West Bank won't be stopped.

On its side, the Palestinian Authority cannot do much more of what they are doing.  The extremist groups who throw rockets from Gaza must be stopped but they are not under the control of the PA.

If President Mahmoud Abbas, who has already chosen the non violent way, won't show soon a real change in daily life of Palestinians and that their lives won't be anymore subjected to the Israeli army, he will be of course delegitimated and rejected by his people.

How is it possible to get the Palestinians (but also us) to believe that the Israeli Government wants peace if its policies continue to maintain the blockade on Gaza Strip and to spread out terror through their raids, if a policy of collective punishment is applied and there is no freedom of movement for people and goods? Even all ill people are prevented to cross the borders: more than 900 are waiting for the permit to leave Gaza Strip (Palestinian Medical Relief) in order to join Egypt or in West Bank for specialized treatments that don't exist in Gaza where hospitals are lacking of medicines and of all basic drugs, and in the last days they have been forced even to shut down their emergency power generators, resulting in a looming "humanitarian disaster" due to Israel's severe reductions in fuel supplies and total siege.

Even if the joint statement in Annapolis has de facto excluded the European Union, the UN, the Quartet and the Arab governments to be real players in the negotiations, establishing that the US have the responsibility to look out at the implementation of the negotiations, the entire International Community must have a political role in the agreements, condemning strongly all obstacles to the negotiations and reinforcing each signal of peace, starting by the end of the Gaza siege, as also asked by the European Parliament on 11th October with a resolution calling on Israeli Government for the lifting of the blockade of the Gaza Strip and to fulfil its international obligations under the Geneva Conventions".   

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