The Lisbon Treaty is no friend of Palestine
galway |
rights, freedoms and repression |
news report 
Monday May 26, 2008 15:01
by TD - Free Palestine Campaign
The Treaty : "An incomprehensible maze by design" (Cathy Sinnott)
For the past two weeks the focus of the Free Palestine Campaign group in Galway has been harvesting signatures for our petition calling on the EU (and the Irish government to work towards effecting it) to suspend or terminate the Euro-Med Agreement, which economically privileges Israel with access to the EU market, due to that country's gross and willful trampling of Palestinian human rights, International Law, Geneva Conventions and Part 2 of the Agreement .
When it comes to Palestine, the moral rot of the EU in refusing to suspend the Agreement does'nt stop there, it's deep and pernicious and with the passing of the Lisbon Treaty will deleteriously effect and infect Palestine further?.
Besides bolstering the economy and legitimising the criminality of a rogue state, the EU has further priviledged Israel with a veto over the opening of the international crossing at Rafah from Gaza into Egypt : "The EU, which has provided a small force (EU BAM Rafah) to monitor the operation of the crossing, has consistently refused to send its personnel to open the crossing when Israel doesn’t want it open. The EU BAM website states that the crossing “can only be opened by agreement between the Parties”, in other words, the EU accords Israel a veto over its opening - this is in flat contradiction to the promise made by (EU honcho), Javier Solana, that the crossing is “not controlled by the Israelis'”.
http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/ipsc/displayRe...ID=74
With the unholy alliance of the EU, Israel and the US now punishing the Palestinians for democratically electing Hamas to political power, Gaza is the concentration camp, the West Bank the open prison where: "The obliteration of an entire people by slow systematic methods of suffocation, outright murder and the stifling of everyday life" (Edward Said) is happening.
If this is how the EU is behaving now, what will its form be towards Palestine and the World, if and when the self-amending and self-serving Lisbon Treaty is passed?. "One of the more disturbing aspects of the Lisbon Treaty is the way it creates new openings for involvement in military adventures. The Treaty would increase the militarisation of the EU, as all states would have to increase their military spending. The Treaty commits the EU to working with US dominated NATO and therefore closely ties Europe to US foreign policy." The Lisbon Treaty also gives the EU the power ‘to fight terrorism, including supporting third countries in combating terrorism," with the Foreign Secretary; David Miliband, of a country that criminally attacked a country five years ago and allowed Israel to devastate Lebanon two years ago as the proposed EU foreign minister, it's no quantum leap into febrile surmise that the "third country" will be Israel and the "terrorists" will be Hamas, Hezbollah or any group opposing its imperial hubris.?
Anna, a stalwart of of the Free Palestine Campaign and baby Aurelie
Galway City Councillor and strong friend of Palestine, Niall O'Brolchain (Green Party)
