Brussels, 27/09/2011 (Agence Europe) - Daniel Cohn-Bendit (Greens/EFA, France) declared during a press conference in Strasbourg on Tuesday 27 September that it was increasingly felt that the historic moment for Israel and Palestine had been allowed to go by. Returning from a five-day visit to Israel and Palestine, Cohn-Bendit said that, as Israel does not want the two-state solution, this will lead to generalised colonisation of the occupied territories. This would mean, he says, that, in one or two years' time, the Palestinian High Authority will be dissolved and Israel will have control over the whole territory, being forced to bring in an apartheid state.
The fact that the Palestinians have gone to the UN to call for the Palestinian state to be recognised is “their last card and the expression of extreme frustration in the Palestinian territories”, Daniel Cohn-Bendit added. In his view, those who say they cannot recognise the statehood of Palestine should take a look at history. The Israeli state was recognised unilaterally by the UN. It was not negotiated with the Arab countries, and its borders were not even defined. There was then the war in 1947. Cohn-Bendit hammered out that the Obamas, Sarkozys and Merkels of this world should know that, for domestic policy reasons, they are endangering peace throughout the region. “We shall do our utmost for the EP to have a clear and simple position”, he said, in order to support the action by the Palestinian president for recognition of the Palestinian state, and to support the resumption of talks and call on Israel to freeze its settlements so that the deadlock in talks may be broken. (LC/transl.jl)