11 - 17 April 2002
Issue No.581
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 11 - 17 April 2002 Issue No.581 |
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Europe sits it out
Seething European Union diplomats were shown the door at the beginning of the week by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Iason Athanasiadis on the week when EU foreign policy took a back seat
Israel dealt the EU two embarrassing reversals last week, making it increasingly clear that it rejects all outside involvement in its self-declared war against terrorism and will not countenance negotiations with any power, except the US.
But the European Union rallied by week's end to threaten the imposition of economic sanctions on Israel in a bid to pressure it to withdraw its army from the Palestinian territories in what British Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Peter Hain is calling "the most dangerous conflict in the world."
Ariel Sharon's government started the week by sabotaging Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou's planned visit to Israel and the occupied territories, claiming that his government would be unable to guarantee the Greek party's security. Three days later, it snubbed EU foreign policy supremo Javier Solana when it barred him and a high-level EU delegation from visiting isolated Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who has been in what amounts to Israeli custody for the past two weeks in Ramallah.
Tensions between the EU and Israel reached a climax when Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar conducted a charged telephone exchange with Ariel Sharon. According to Spain's El Mundo, the Israeli prime minister accused Aznar of attempting to contact "the head of the terrorists." The EU delegation was granted an audience with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, instead, and left Israel soon after. Sharon added insult to EU injury when he waved US Middle East envoy Anthony Zinni through to a meeting with Arafat just a day later.
The EU's marginalisation was viewed with increasing frustration by its leaders. Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel called Sharon's posture an "affront" and an "insult," adding that the EU should be allowed to "give a political and a diplomatic answer." EU spokeswoman Emma Udwin said, "This is not about vanity. This is about what works. Casting blame at this stage is not a fruitful line of thinking."
The diplomatic antagonism between the EU and the Bush administration reached new peaks when Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission, dismissed the US mediating role, saying: "It is clear mediation efforts have failed and we need new mediation. Tension is increasing in many Middle East countries. Further escalation of the crisis must be avoided at all cost." Prodi suggested that the US monopoly over the peace process be substituted by a broad alliance of nations including the EU, moderate Arab states and Russia.
But Prodi was praising US re- engagement only a few days later, as Bush announced that he would send US Secretary of State Colin Powell to the region. "I warmly welcome the statement of President Bush. It is an expression of determination and leadership," Prodi said.
Prodi also announced that the EU will give a further $4.4 million in emergency humanitarian aid for Palestinian areas under siege and criticised Israel for causing "a major humanitarian crisis" by sealing off Palestinian areas, choking off medical aid and harassing medical personnel and humanitarian relief workers.
Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Pique, whose country currently holds the EU rotating presidency, has been leading the field in attempting to insert the EU in the tight American-Israeli embrace. Pique insists that a joint position by the United States, Russia and the EU is needed if any solution is to be found to the raging conflict.
Pique announced on Sunday that the EU may consider imposing sanctions on Israel but did not specify the nature of the sanctions or the timetable for their application.
Spanish diplomatic sources in Cairo appeared pessimistic that the threat of sanctions would be carried out: "They (the EU) don't even know what they're going to do. They are very upset at the Israeli snub but reaching a consensus on a European level is a new phenomenon and so it might take time."
Some European governments have suggested using trade sanctions to put pressure on Israel to halt its offensive. But EU officials acknowledged it was unlikely that all 15 EU members would agree to invoke a clause that commits both sides to respect human rights.
The two-year-old association accord provides for an EU-Israel political dialogue and cooperation on a broad range of economic issues, including granting preferential access to Israeli exports.
Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, said sanctions were possible, but he added that unanimous agreement from all 15 EU members would be needed for any such action. "I hope very much that the situation will evolve in a positive manner," so sanctions will not be required, Solana said.
Meanwhile, as EU procrastination continued, there was a swell in grassroots support for the Palestinians across Europe. France emerged as the most vocal and polarised European nation, though there were also large protests elsewhere in Europe, with 20,000 demonstrators marching in Rome, 10,000 in Brussels and 5,000 in Sweden's Goteborg.
A pro-Palestinian march in Paris on Saturday, numbering around 30,000, was followed on Sunday by 50,000 people protesting a recent wave of anti- Semitic attacks against Jewish schools and places of worship. Though French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin urged supporters of both the Israelis and the Palestinians to express their emotions in a "positive, constructive manner" and cautioned against France splintering into sectarian communities, hundreds of demonstrators clashed and a police officer was stabbed. There were also marches in the port city of Marseilles, where the large resident Arab community mustered 15,000 demonstrators, as well as in other French cities.
In the West Bank, Al-Ahram Weekly correspondent Michael Jansen reported from Ramallah that a group of five deputies from the European parliament bested the EU delegation by getting into Arafat's compound. In addition, 50 Italian members of Action for Peace spent the past week offering themselves as human shields to prevent the Israeli army from entering a hospital. One of them observed, "I have been to Sarajevo, Kosovo and Tusla but I have never seen anything like this. A woman was shot the other day, just outside the hospital. We couldn't get to her because of the snipers."
By week's end, as more reports of human rights abuses emerged from the Palestinian cities that had been occupied by Israeli troops, talk shifted to the humanitarian repercussions of the Israeli incursions. Prodi called for the immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops from recently occupied Palestinian territories, saying, "The West Bank situation is rapidly turning into a major humanitarian crisis."
Israel's occupation of Bethlehem and its standoff with armed Palestinian militants inside the Church of the Nativity raised outraged protests by the Vatican. The Pope issued a strong statement against the "unjust conditions and humiliations imposed on the Palestinian people as well as the reprisals and revenge attacks which do nothing but feed the sense of frustration and hatred." Vatican diplomats denied reports that they put forward a proposal to Israelis and Palestinians to end the stalemate at the church, one of Christianity's holiest sites.
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