Ten EU Foreign Ministers sent a letter today to new Quartet envoy Tony Blair, calling the Road Map dead, calling for an international peacekeeping force in the `Palestinian' territories and massive new concessions by Israel, including releasing thousands of terrorists in Israeli custody and releasing millions of dollars in frozen Palestinian tax duties to the Palestinian Authority.
Signing the letter, which was published in the French daily Le Monde today, were the foreign ministers of France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal, Bulgaria, Romania, Cyprus, Slovenia and Malta.
The sheer arrogance of this is simply breathtaking. Many of the terrorists incarcerated in Israel ( like Marwan Barghouti, for instance) were convicted in Israeli courts of the most cold-blooded and brutal murders of civilians imaginable, and it is amazing that any civilized society would want them walking free unless they tacitly approve of their deeds. If they do, those EU ministers should simply admit it openly for a change. Just like some of the Arab governments, they're hiding their racism and cynical disregard for morality by using the `Palestinians' as a shield and an excuse.
As for the all-important money, the reason more of it hasn't been released to the `Palestinian' Authority is because the Israeli courts have frozen it against claims and judgments by Israeli companies for goods and services ordered by the PA but never paid for, and damages committed by Palestinian terrorists such as the claim the Israeli Egged Bus Company has for the destruction of Israeli buses, and claims by individual Israeli citizens against the PA for losses, injuries and wrongful deaths caused by those same Palestinian terrorists the EU wants released.
The first stage of the infamous Road Map asked for the Palestinians and Abbas to do two things: Disarm terrorists like the al-Aksa Brigade and Hamas and renounce terrorism as a tool of policy and to end the incitement against Israel in the PA's schools, media and mosques.
This is the same thing that was demanded of Yasir Arafat at Oslo. Arafat didn't comply with it then, and Abbas didn't comply with it either when the Roadmap was agreed to. And needless to say, the `Palestinians' have never suffered any direct consequences from the EU or the United States because of it. The answer is always a new agreement, with, of course, more one way concessions by Israel.
Ariel Sharon should never have agreed to the Road Map - which was prepared with the assistance of a number of Arabs but not a single Jew - or the idea of the `Quartet', and he only did so under protest and with the aid of massive arm twisting by the Bush Administration.
Even someone as clueless as Ehud Olmert ought to be able to read the writing on this particular wall, ditch the entire notion of the Roadmap and the Quartet as having any kind of say over Israel's policies and insist on being treated like any other nation would be.
If he can't - and the evidence so far is that he's totally clueless in this area - Israel had better go to elections and find someone who can, before they lose their whole country.
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