Europe Must Act Firmly on Gaza

        Israel/Palestine is awash with peace missions from Europe at the moment, all urging a ceasefire in the current conflict in Gaza.  Tony Blair, the Madrid Quartet’s (bizarrely chosen) Middle East peace envoy has not been on holiday (as Gordon Brown rather cattily said on British television over the weekend), but shuttling between Jerusalem and Ramallah. The French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been through, urging an end to hostilities, as has a Czech-led delegation from the European Union, which included the EU’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana. And what has been the outcome off all this activity? Nothing!

Conflicts are never black-and-white, in which one side is 100% wrong and the other 100% right, so I would not claim that that is the case in Gaza now. The Islamic militants (whether encouraged by Hamas or not) who have been sending a barrage of low-grade rockets into Israel over the past few months have been inexcusably provocative. However, the Israeli response has not just been ‘disproportionate’, to employ the eupemism that is currently so much in vogue. It is wicked. It is criminal. The Arab world will not forgive Israel for this. And neither should Europe.

Europe was instrumental in the creation of the modern state of Israel, both as a result of British colonial policy (the Balfour Declaration et al) and as a result of the Nazi Holocaust in Germany and German-occupied states. So Europe cannot wash its hands of the consequences. Moreover, as the European Union is committed to championing peace, human rights and the rule of law, not only within its borders but beyond them as well, it must address the Israel/Palestine situation. The EU has a good record in helpng the Palestinian Authority, including funding projects and institutions (some of which the Israelis have subsequently blown up). And it has close working ties with Israel. But it is not flexing its muscles strongly enough with the Israeli government.

Preferential trade arrangements between the EU and Israel should be suspended immediately. European political leaders should stop using euphemisms, and condemn the barbarity of the Israeli assault on Gaza in clear, unambiguous terms. Europe should also tell the United States publicly that it is unacceptable for the Bush administration to block United Nations resolutions aimed at ending the conflict. And European political leaders should put pressure on Barack Obama to declare that his policy on the Middle East will not just be a carbon-copy of George W Bush’s.

We should continue to criticise Hamas where appropriate as well, of course (though objectively speaking now there is all-out war in Gaza, as declared by the Israeli Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, the Palestinians have every right to defend themselves from the Israeli invasion in whatever way they can). A comprehensive ceasefire agreement is essential in which Hamas guarantees to stop rocket-fire on Israel and to ensure that the tunnels used for bringing arms into Gaza from Egypt are closed, while at the same time Israel lifts its land and sea blockade of Gaza totally and permanently, and the land crossing between Gaza and Egypt is opened and properly supervised.

The Israelis have indicated that they are not interested in such a ceasefire until they have pounded Hamas into the ground. Europe should lead the Western world in denouncing that attitude. The Israelis are getting away with murder (with Washington’s benediction). Every day, Palestinian children are being slaughtered, disabled and traumatised. Europe must disassociate itself from this action and show its mettle on the international stage. The time has come to turn swords into ploughshares, and shells into vases (as the illustration of flowers in Gaza shows).

Let’s Talk about the Euro

    A few days ago, the euro celebrated ten years of existence and Slovakia became the sixteenth EU member state to adopt it. So much for those doom-merchants who declared at its creation that it would sink without trace. On the contrary, after a bumpy start, it has soared, so that it is now more or less at parity with the pound. Sterling, in contrast, is in a sorry state. It’s noticeable how even William Hague isn’t going round these days chanting ‘Save the pound!’

However, with a few important exceptions — such as Will Hutton in the Observer — few people are debating publicly the pros and cons of British euro-membership. The New Labour government, as usual, is pussy-footing around, mumbling about how in principle Britain should join one day, but this is not something we should even talk about at the moment. The clear reason for this is because a significant majority of the British public is said by opinion pollsters to be hostile to the euro. But how can that situation ever change, if the government keeps brushing the subject under the carpet? In the meantime, as Britons travel to the Continent this year, they are going to get a big shock when they discover just how weak the once mighty pound sterling is.

So I am delighted to have been sent for review a copy of an important new book by David Marsh, Chairman of London and Oxford Capital Markets (and a fellow graduate trainee with me at Reuters back in 1973): The Euro — The Politics of the New Global Currency. This will be published at the beginning of March by Yale University Press, but it is already attracting attention. George Soros has given it an enthusiastic puff, describing it as ‘amazingly detailed and thoroughly readable… The stuff of a political thriller.’ So I shall snuggle down with it with enthusiasm.

Bush’s Final Dirty Deed in Gaza

   Israeli ground troops have gone into the Gaza Strip, in what Israeli military sources have called a ‘limited operation’. Major Avital Leibovitch told reporters in Jerusalem that ‘we are going to take some of the launch areas used by Hamas’. That suggests a quick, surgical strike, but it certainly won’t be like that in reality. Palestinian militants who have (wrongly and stupidly) been lobbing missiles into Israel have largely been doing so from portable launchers which they can set up anywhere. What that means is that Israeli soldiers will have to go into densely populated areas, including in Gaza City, where civilian casualties are likely to be high. The massacre of the innocents which started with the recent Israeli bombardments has entered a new, vicious phase. And of course the Palestinians will resist. People do, when they are invaded by a foreign force, even when their weapons are no match for the enemy’s.

Not for the first time in recent modern Middle Eastern history, there is an evil power which is allowing all this to happen: the Bush administration in Washington. Some commentators had speculated that before George Bush left office, he would do something ‘spectacular’, like bomb Iran. But encouraging Israel to invade — and possibly reoccupy — Gaza was, in my view, always a more likely option. Bullies tend to pick on the weaker prey.

The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, has called for an immediate cessation of hostilities, but Tel Aviv will not listen. The United States has told Israel it doesn’t need to. The UN Security Council met in an emergency session but it failed to come up with an agreed statement, thanks to the United States. US Ambassador Alejandro Wolff declared that a statement which blamed both Hamas and Israel for the current situation would not be ‘helpful’. In other words, the Bush administration has given the Israelis carte blanche to do whatever they want in Gaza and to pin all the blame on Hamas.

Britain and other EU member states must disassociate themselves strongly from this obscene stance. We must denounce what is going on, in the strongest possible terms, to both Tel Aviv and Washington, and suspend Israel’s preferential relationship with the EU. Meanwhile, George W Bush is handing on to Barack Obama a poisoned chalice, as it is Obama who will have to try to extract the United States from the immoral position into which outgoing President Bush has placed it.

(photo of Gaza City: TravelPod)

Allow Journalists into Gaza!

    Despite a ruling by the Israeli Supreme Court on Wednesday that a limited number of foreign journalists should be allowed into the Gaza Strip to report on what is happening there, the Israeli government and military have refused to comply. So much for the Jewish state’s much-vaunted respect for Western values such as press freedom and the rule of law. The Foreign Press Association, which represents journalists in Israel and the Palestinian Territories, has called on the Israeli government to ‘immediately honour the will of the Court and allow foreign journalists access to Gaza.’  Freedom of the Press should be an inviolable principle of any putative civilized and democratic society.

Tomorrow, the Israeli military is planning to open the Erez crossing between Israel and Gaza, to allow the passage into Israel of Palestinians requiring urgent medical treatment. They should allow foreign journalists to cross the other way at the same time, so the world can get an accurate and objective picture of the situation in the blockaded territory that is currently under assault. Foreign journalists are rightly often taken by the Israeli authorities to Sderot and other Israeli towns that have been the victim of Palestinian rockets, so they should be allowed to see and report on the damage the Israeli bombardments have done in Gaza as well.

Is Tzipi Livni Evil, or Just Stupid?

     ‘There is no humanitarian crisis in the [Gaza] Strip,’ Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said in Paris yesterday, ‘and therefore there is no need for a humanitarian truce.’ I imagine the Germans said the same thing about the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Second World War. I wonder how Ms Livni squares her statement with the recent verdict of the UN’s Special Rapporteur for human rights in the Palestinian Territories, Richard Falk, that ‘Israel is commiting a shocking series of atrocities by using modern weaponry against a defencless population — attacking a population that has been enduring a severe blockade for several months.’ At least 60 of the approximately 400 fatalities so far in the Israeli assault have been Palestinian civilians, including children, but apparently for Tel Aviv they do not matter. They’re not Jews.

I deplore the rocket attacks on Israel by Palestinian militants and it is essential that some mechanism be found whereby these can be stopped. But turning Gaza into an enormous ghetto and then bombarding it, as Israel has done, is not the solution. It can only make things worse. I applaud the fact that several human rights groups inside Israel have called on the government to ease the blockade — for example, by allowing a resumption of the supply of industrial diesel, so hospitals and other vital institutions can function normally, thereby reducing yet more unnecessary deaths. And I welcome the fact that in Israel, it is possible for such human rights groups and dissident voices to exist and to speak out.

However, the Israeli government is quite clearly commiting a war crime against the civilian population of Gaza and needs to be brought to book. Tzipi Livni and other political leaders who aspire to be Israel’s next Prime Minister must realise that, surely? Which invites the question, are they evil or just stupid?

Fears over Czech EU Presidency

The Czech Republic took over the six-month rotating presidency of the European Union today — an absurd system of regional political lesadership, which would have been reformed by the Lisbon Treaty. Alas, we are unlikely to see any progress on that front from Prague, as the Czech Republic is one of three EU member states yet to ratify the Treaty. The centre-right government of Mirek Topolanek has been dragging its heels on the matter and the country’s president, Vaclav Klaus, is an avowed Euro-sceptic.

The Czechs take over at a critical time in foreign affairs, given the ongoing Israeli onslaught on Gaza. Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg is expected to fly to the region on Sunday, but it is doubtful if he will be as even-handed as the outgoing French presidency was. Schwarzenberg echoes the Bush administration’s line on the Middle East, and endorsed the Gaza strikes, putting all the blame for the current situatio  on Hamas. This makes it important for other EU member states to lobby Prague for a more objective and constructive position.