EU urged to step-up diplomacy efforts in Middle East
EPA/ATEF SAFADI
The European Union needs to apply “concerted diplomatic pressure” on the Israeli authorities to allow greater Palestinian access to the fertile Jordan Valley, a leading NGO has said.
The call comes as European Commission President, Jose Mauel Barroso is due to make his first visit to Israel and Palestine, beginning on 8 July, ahead of the EU-Israel Association Council, which takes place in Brussels on 24 July.
A new report by Oxfam, On the Brink: The Impact of Settlements on Palestinians in the Jordan Valley, urges the European Commission and the EU to “to move beyond statements and urge the Government of Israel to end illegal settlement construction” in the region. This comes in the wake of the EU’s statement on 14 May that condemned settler violence and demolitions carried out in Israeli controlled parts of the occupied West Bank.
However since then, according to an Oxfam statement, “Palestinians have seen no meaningful change on the ground. The government of Israel demolished at least 59 Palestinian structures - many of them funded by European taxpayers- and 34 Palestinian families were displaced when their communities were used as the site for an extensive military training in an area of the Jordan Valley”.
According to Tidhar Wald, Oxfam’s humanitarian policy officer, the economic potential of the fertile valley is potentially €1bn per year. Israeli policy, he says “is undermining the viability of a future Palestinian state”.
Wald told New Europe that the valley “could be the breadbasket” that gives economic sustainability to the Palestinian population. Currently, the region supplies a variety of produce, such as dates, grapes, bread and various fruits to European supermarkets.
“European Union member states, and the EU institutions, give about €1bn a year for humanitarian development in the region”, says Wald, “but it is also Israel’s largest trading partner. The EU has a lot of leverage”. Giving aid money to the Palestinians, who then have their progress destroyed by Israeli policy, he adds, amounts to what is “certainly a very expensive policy” for the EU. “it is in their interest to end the conflict”, he says, which for the first time EU foreign ministries explicitly acknowledged in May.
“The EU needs to push Israel to remove restrictions on the Palestinians. If, for instance, Jordan Valley restrictions on land an water access were removed, and so there was better access to certain resources, that could add up to €1bn a year in economic terms”.
The EU, he says, needs to be stronger in pushing the economic argument, and in truly forcing diplomatic pressure on the authorities, and leading to real change, not just statement. “in the past”, says Wald, “Ashton or other EU officials, would come up with a statement saying ‘we deplore this’ or ‘we criticise this’, but there needs to be more pressure, not just statements. There needs to be the highest-level diplomatic pressure to get Israel to migrate rights to the Palestinian people.”
“This needs to be done in a collective way, with concerted diplomatic efforts to end this expensive policy. It is European taxpayer’s money going down the drain”.
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