EU’s “magic wand” diplomacy
By Stuart Littlewood
17 February 2011
Stuart Littlewood views British Foreign Secretary William Hague’s and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton’s
protestations in favour of an Israeli-Palestinian settlement based on a return to the 1967 borders, against the
background of their unwillingness to force Israel to implement UN Security Council resolutions to that end.
"The government are a friend to both Israelis and Palestinians," UK Foreign Secretary William Hague, a dedicated Israel
fan, told Parliament this week.
We are calling for both sides to show the visionary boldness to return to talks and make genuine compromises. Talks need
to take place on the basis of clear parameters. In our view, the entire international community, including the United
States, should now support 1967 borders as the basis for resumed negotiations...
Being St Valentine's Day, he must have been feeling a sudden and unaccustomed upsurge of romantic love for our
Palestinian brothers and sisters.
The next day European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said that the international community is still seeking
to achieve a peace deal and a Palestinian state by September, despite the revolutionary turmoil in the region and
pathetic whining from the delinquent Israeloi foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, that the Iranian problem must be
solved first.
There is of course no Iranian problem. There is no Palestinian problem. There is only the Israel problem. It’s been
festering for 63 years. That’s what has to be solved.
Unless they’ve undergone a dramatic conversion to justice and Ashton and Hague start banging the table about enforcing
international law and implementing long overdue EU sanctions against Israeli trade, such as the scrapping of the EU
Association Agreement (the terms of which Israel is in permanent breach), what on earth do they think a Palestinian
state cobbled together from lopsided “negotiations” is going to look like?
In particular, how are they going to transform the present shredded and impoverished remnants of Palestinian
sovereignty, shockingly revealed in the clever map by Julien Boussac dubbed “Eastern Palestine Archipelago” (Atlas Du
Monde Diplomatique, 2009), into the internationally recognized pre-1967 “green line” boundaries Hague says he supports?
And all this by September? "It's a time frame that everybody has signed up to," says Ashton, adding that a deal is still
reachable in spite of the deadlock in the peace talks.
Abracadabra... Zzzz-zzzz... Just like that!
Hamas, which has a legitimate say in the future whether Hague and Ashton like it or not, and which feels Palestinian
interests are not served by “negotiations” in the present unbalanced circumstances, must be watching bemused.
If any talking is to take place, it should first be disciplinary dressing-down from the United Nations to its rogue
member, Israel.
ENDS