EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso committed the EU’s support to achieving a negotiated settlement in the Middle East peace process Thursday, in a meeting with visiting Israeli President Shimon Peres in Brussels, as he called on the respected statesman to use his “energy, capacity and leadership” to kickstart direct negotiations with the Palestinians, which have lain dormant since 2010.
Conceding that “Israel should be fully recognised by its regional partners and should live in security within its borders”, however, he issued a thinly veiled criticism of Israel’s contested settlement policy, insisting that “any actions that may undermine the two-state solution should, clearly, be avoided”.
Stressing that “the Palestinian aspiration to have its own state must be fulfilled”, in light of the Palestinian Authority’s successful appeal last November to the UN General Assembly for non-member observer status, he concluded that “we need to avoid that a one state reality prevents a two-state solution”.
“Peace has always been among humanity’s highest aspirations,” he reflected,” as he extrapolated on Europe’s own efforts to get to grips with the concept of reconciliation in the aftermath of the Holocaust, during which period the Jewish State itself was established. “Now we all recognise how peace is the foundation stone for everything else,” he added.
A day previously, following a meeting with Peres as part of his three-day visit to Brussels to meet with the EU institution heads before travelling on to Paris Friday, EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy issued a more marked condemnation of Israeli settlement policy as he recalled “the opposition of the European Union to the illegal expansion of settlements”, which has previously seen the foreign affairs council publish strongly-worded conclusions o the subject, incensing Israeli authorities in the process. Calling for bold steps to resuscitate direct and urgent negotiations, Van Rompuy insisted that “there will be no sustainable peace until the Palestinian’s aspirations for statehood and sovereignty and those of Israelis for security are fulfilled through a comprehensive and negotiated peace based on the two-State solution”.
Rejecting the criticism, Peres responded that “the most important difficulty is not settlements but terror”, as he called on the EU to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation in light of the Bulgarian report implicating them for carrying out an attack on Israeli tourists in Burgas last July. “I don''t take this criticism that, because of the settlements, we lost the chance of implementing the two-state solution,” he added, recalling the myriad threats posed to Israel’s existence by states wishing to delegitimise it. “Iran is not threatened by the nations of the world but Iran does not respect international agreements and threatens the entire world,” he concluded.
Peres’ visit to Europe, which will also see him make an historic address to the European Parliament plenary session in Strasbourg next Tuesday - the first by an Israeli President in 28 years - comes at a critical time for Israel domestically, as Premier Benjamin Netanyahu struggles to conclude crucial coalition negotiations ahead of US President Barack Obama’s arrival in Jerusalem later this month. The second-term Us President and close ally of Peres is expected to dwell heavily on the stalled Middle East Peace Process as part of his talks with his Israeli counterparts.