EU’s “magic wand” diplomacy

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

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