Jerusalem, 23/04/2002 (Agence Europe) - Twenty MEPs from six political groups held meetings with representatives from the Knesset, Israeli peace movements the Palestinian Legislative Council and the European Parliament on 22-23 April in Jerusalem. (See EUROPE 17 April page 8).
On Monday evening a meeting took place with MEPs, and the Vice President of the Knesset, Naomi Chazan. The latter opposed the imposition of sanctions on Israel because it would risk damaging the "micro-opposition", which is developing with in Israeli public opinion to current policy. Sanctions had been effective in South Africa but had required ten years, he explained. "Here we don't have ten years, we don't have ten months, and undoubtedly not even ten weeks", he explained. The Israeli Vice President did say that he supported a strong international intervention that would allow the violence to end and re-launch the negotiating process. Michael Warschawski, President of the Alternative Information Centre, explained to journalists accompanying the European delegation that this represented a turning point in Israeli public opinion.
On Tuesday morning, the European delegation had meetings with Jean Breteché, Head of the European Commission Delegation to the Palestinian Authority, in East Jerusalem. Mr Breteché explained that the Europeans had instruments for putting pressure on Israel but lacked the courage to do so (he mentioned co-operation in the field of research, which is very valuable to the Israelis, as well as different points raised in the resolution adopted by the European Parliament on 10 April in Strasbourg (see EUROPE 11 April). He also indicated that the Commission and the different international organisations were due to assess the cost of reconstruction of destroyed infrastructure caused by Israeli interventions and that the Commission and other donors wanted assurances from contacts in the Israeli Ministry of Defence that the reconstructed infrastructures were not in danger of being destroyed again.
On Tuesday, MEPs also met Abu Ala, spokesman for the Palestinian Legislative Council, who thanked them for making the visit at such a critical juncture. The Palestinian leader urgently requested that MEPs adopted a resolution focusing exclusively on the need to put an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.
On Tuesday evening in Brussels, the President of the European Parliament, Pat Cox, met the President of the Knesset, Avraham Burg. (EUROPE will return to this subject).
Among the participants on the visit were seven members of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left, including their President, Francis Wurtz, Greek Socialist, Anna Karamanou's group members, Proinsias De Rossa (Ireland), Liberals Lousewies van der Laan (Netherlands) and Baroness Sara Ludford (United Kingdom), members of the Green/European Free Alliance Per Gharton (Sweden) and Camilo Nogueira I Roman (Galician MEP, Spain), the Dane Ulla Sandbaek (Europe of Democracies and Diversities) and British Conservative Roy Perry (EPP-DE group).
MEPs also visited the Jenin refugee camp where they met refugee representative, Jamal Shaat and the director of the hospital, as well as families, who asked them to witness the destruction they had seen with their own eyes. Francis Wurtz stated that indignation had to be followed by action and that the EU had the means to act. Without wishing to jump ahead of the UN visit's conclusions, Mr Wurtz spoke of "war crimes". Lousewies van der Laan also called for sanctions, whilst recognising that this wouldn't be supported unanimously. Proinsias De Rossa thought that the EU should at least suspend the Association Agreement with Israel. Roy Perry said that there had clearly been systematic acts of destruction, whilst stressing that MEPs had not yet heard the Israeli side of the story.