Middle East roadmap for peace effectively torn up

international | rights, freedoms and repression | press release Friday February 10, 2006 12:53 by cafe - labour

failure of the European Union to engage with the relatively moderate recent statement from Hamas, which suggested a role for the international community in the initiation of talks, which, taking as their starting point, the international legal position of the 1967 borders, and which could lead to recognition of the state of Israel by Hamas, is deeply disappointing - says Michael D.Higgins

The European Union is looking on at the ending of the proposals for peace in the Middle East known as the Road Map for peace. Whatever opportunity existed for the European Union as a member of the Quartet which proposed such peace proposals is rapidly evaporating.

The recent statement by the Acting Prime Minister of Israel that it intends to retain East Jerusalem, extend its borders to include the Jordan Valley and retain over two thirds of the illegal settlements in the West Bank, and that it will do so within a period of two years, by unilateral action if necessary, is such as to entirely negate the final stage of the Road Map.

The failure of the European Union to engage with the relatively moderate recent statement from Hamas, which suggested a role for the international community in the initiation of talks, which, taking as their starting point, the international legal position of the 1967 borders, and which could lead to recognition of the state of Israel by Hamas, is deeply disappointing.

The deterioration in conditions is such as to make impossible the advancement of peace proposals. In the run into elections in Israel, the inaction of the international community will be construed by Palestinians as the acceptance of the illegal settlements and the ignoring of the ruling of the International Court of Justice in relation to the construction of the illegal wall/barrier on Palestinian land.

Condemning future generations of Palestinians to poverty, dispossession and humiliation on the one hand, and future generations of Israeli citizens to insecurity on the other, is something from which governments of the European Union, in particular, and indeed the international community generally, will not be able to escape the judgement of history as constituting one of the greatest moral evasions of our time.