On Monday 12 October, Mohammad Shtayyeh, the Palestinian Prime Minister, called on Europeans to do more to achieve peace in the Middle East and to help the Palestinians.
Appearing before the European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs, the Prime Minister suggested setting up an international conference “based on international law, hosted by the United Nations” with the other members of the Quartet, including the EU.
“We know that without the United States, there will be no peace, and with the United States alone, we will get nowhere. (...) We need to add in a paradigm shift towards multilateralism, because bilateralism hasn’t taken us anywhere”, he said. Shtayyeh said that the peace negotiations need to pick up where they left off. He also called on the Israelis to respect the agreements that had previously been signed.
“Any future peace process needs a genuine honest broker. We have suffered a lot because the US has a strategic alliance with Israel. It does not have the attributes needed from an honest broker in the peace process. We need a third party that will restore the balance between the occupiers and the occupied”, he added, though he did not specifically mention the EU.
The Prime Minister asked the EU to be more enterprising and not wait for the American President, whoever he might be, to come up with ideas. He stated that, since the 1991 Madrid Conference, American Presidents had wanted to provide their own terms of reference for an agreement, without focusing on international peace or United Nations resolutions. “Let's all work together, with the United States, to create terms of reference that will get us somewhere”, the Palestinian representative said. He also noted that there had never really been any measures to build confidence between the Palestinians and the Israelis.
Shtayyeh also called on the EU to act against colonisation, which is illegal under international law. “Israel must not keep gaining from it. The Israelis are taking our land without compensation”, he said, and called on the EU to boycott products from the settlements. “The colonies are getting bigger every day and you accept products made in and exported from the colonies. I hope that you will take further steps to prevent these exports”, he said, before adding that the occupation should cost Israel money, not earn it more.
The Prime Minister believes that the EU should also put in place the long-awaited Association Agreement with Palestine and that Member States should recognise the Palestinian state. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)