ktlight
26th May 2011, 09:28
FYI:
sraeli finance minister Yuval Steinitz has said that select EU countries' support for Palestine's plan to seek full UN membership is linked to ancient anti-Semitism.
Speaking to EUobserver in Brussels on Tuesday (23 May) at an event to mark the 63rd anniversary of the creation of Israel, the minister said there is a tendency in Europe to blame the failure of the peace process on the Jewish side only.
"It's very easy to put all the blame in the world on the Jewish state. As Joschka Fischer, the former German foreign minister once put it in Israel, he said 'I cannot ignore the fact there is an old European tradition of 2,000 years to blame the Jews.' So maybe some of the animosity toward the state of Israel is a disguised [form of this], is coming from this tradition."
Palestinian diplomats say around 10 European countries, including Greece, Ireland, France, Spain and Sweden, as well as non-EU member Norway, will back the UN bid, which is planned to take place in September.
The initiative to create an independent Palestine outside the framework of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks comes amid a long-standing deadlock in the negotiations.
It also comes after the moderate Fatah movement, which controls the Israeli-occupied West Bank, created a new unity governent with the militant Hamas group, which controls Gaza and which is listed by the EU as a terrorist entity because it advocates armed resistance against Israel.
Steinitz denied that Israeli settlement-building on occupied Palestinian land is the main obstacle to peace.
"Once it will be clear that the Arab people, including the Palestinians, really recognise Israel's right to exist as it was established as a Jewish state, then I think it will be possible to achieve an agreement," he said.
The minister described the UN plan as a "challenge to Israel's very existance" because it would bypass deal-making on questions such as the right of return of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees driven out by Israeli soldiers in the 1940s.
The finance chief threatened to permanently block transfers of Palestinian tax income to the Palestinian authorities if they stick with the Hamas pact. He said Israel's confiscation of tax income this month is "temporary, a warning sign."
He added: "If they will co-operate with this terrorist organisation ... we will have to reconsider whether we can co-operate with them, whether we can deliver money they might misuse to fund terrorist organisations or terrorist acts."
Steinitz' anniversary speech in Brussels celebrated Israeli military victories over Arab forces and described the nuclear-armed regional superpower as a "tiny, minscule" entity. It also spoke of Israel as a "Western" country with advanced democratic standards and a high-tech economy in contrast to its Arab neighbours.
source to continue
http://weeklyintercept.blogspot.com/2011/05/israel-links-eu-support-for.html
sraeli finance minister Yuval Steinitz has said that select EU countries' support for Palestine's plan to seek full UN membership is linked to ancient anti-Semitism.
Speaking to EUobserver in Brussels on Tuesday (23 May) at an event to mark the 63rd anniversary of the creation of Israel, the minister said there is a tendency in Europe to blame the failure of the peace process on the Jewish side only.
"It's very easy to put all the blame in the world on the Jewish state. As Joschka Fischer, the former German foreign minister once put it in Israel, he said 'I cannot ignore the fact there is an old European tradition of 2,000 years to blame the Jews.' So maybe some of the animosity toward the state of Israel is a disguised [form of this], is coming from this tradition."
Palestinian diplomats say around 10 European countries, including Greece, Ireland, France, Spain and Sweden, as well as non-EU member Norway, will back the UN bid, which is planned to take place in September.
The initiative to create an independent Palestine outside the framework of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks comes amid a long-standing deadlock in the negotiations.
It also comes after the moderate Fatah movement, which controls the Israeli-occupied West Bank, created a new unity governent with the militant Hamas group, which controls Gaza and which is listed by the EU as a terrorist entity because it advocates armed resistance against Israel.
Steinitz denied that Israeli settlement-building on occupied Palestinian land is the main obstacle to peace.
"Once it will be clear that the Arab people, including the Palestinians, really recognise Israel's right to exist as it was established as a Jewish state, then I think it will be possible to achieve an agreement," he said.
The minister described the UN plan as a "challenge to Israel's very existance" because it would bypass deal-making on questions such as the right of return of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees driven out by Israeli soldiers in the 1940s.
The finance chief threatened to permanently block transfers of Palestinian tax income to the Palestinian authorities if they stick with the Hamas pact. He said Israel's confiscation of tax income this month is "temporary, a warning sign."
He added: "If they will co-operate with this terrorist organisation ... we will have to reconsider whether we can co-operate with them, whether we can deliver money they might misuse to fund terrorist organisations or terrorist acts."
Steinitz' anniversary speech in Brussels celebrated Israeli military victories over Arab forces and described the nuclear-armed regional superpower as a "tiny, minscule" entity. It also spoke of Israel as a "Western" country with advanced democratic standards and a high-tech economy in contrast to its Arab neighbours.
source to continue
http://weeklyintercept.blogspot.com/2011/05/israel-links-eu-support-for.html