Category Archives: European Union

Will Dubai issue an arrest warrant for Netanyahu?

Update below
Dubai’s police chief has now fingered Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, as being responsible for the murder of , on January 19, Lt Gen Dahi Khalfan Tamim told The National:

“Our investigations reveal that Mossad is involved in the murder of al Mabhouh. It is 99 per cent, if not 100 per cent that Mossad is standing behind the murder,” said Gen Tamim.

The evidence that Dubai Police have shows a clear link between the suspects and people with a close connection to Israel, according to Gen Tamim. However, he did not disclose what the evidences were.

Earlier Gen Tamim had said if it is proven that Mossad is responsible for the killing of al Mabhouh “Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, will be the first to be wanted for justice as he would have been the one who signed the decision to kill [Mahmoud] al Mabhouh in Dubai’ and that an arrest warrant will be issued against him.

However, today Gen Tamim declined to comment on whether the UAE authorities is to issue an arrest warrant for Mr Netanyahu.

Dubai’s Gulf News has compiled a video of the CCTV footage that shows the assassins tracking their target. (There is no audio with this presentation.)

The Times provides an account of the movements of the assassins in the hours before and after al-Mahbouh’s murder.

The Daily Telegraph reports that Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Miliband said that it was an “outrage” that the Dubai assassins had used British passports and the British government has launched an investigation.

Mr Miliband spoke out after the Israeli ambassador to London, Ron Prosor, was called to the Foreign Office to discuss the affair, which is rapidly escalating into a major diplomatic crisis.

“We wanted to give Israel every opportunity to share with us what it knows about this incident,” Mr Miliband said.

“We hope and expect that they will co-operate fully with the investigation that has been launched by the Prime Minister and will be undertaken by the Serious Organised Crime Agency.”

Mr Miliband denied that the UK Government was merely “going through the motions” of asking questions about the incident.

It is too soon to say how great the diplomatic fallout will be but since all the countries whose passports were used illegally — Britain, Ireland, France and Germany — are EU members, it seems likely that the matter will rise to the level of European Union involvement.
The BBC‘s Paul Reynolds writes:

At this stage, it is a matter of Britain asking questions, not making protests and taking retaliatory action (such as demanding an apology, restricting official contacts or even expelling the ambassador for a time).

During his meeting with Mr Prosor, the permanent under-secretary Sir Peter Ricketts asked for full Israeli cooperation with the British inquiry. This is likely to prove problematic if Mossad was involved. Israel would not want to reveal too much. So a lot depends on how the word “cooperation” is defined. A total failure to cooperate would trigger a British response.

One complicating factor is that in 1987, the Israelis promised Britain that it would not use British passports in secret operations again.

On that occasion, eight British passports reckoned to be for Mossad agents were found in a bag in a West German telephone booth.

The then Israeli ambassador in London Yehuda Avner did find himself on the receiving end of a British protest.

If it turns out that the assurance given then has been broken the British diplomatic reaction will be the more severe.

Updated: It sounds as though Dubai’s police chief is now backing off from his earlier threat to issue an arrest warrant for Netanyahu. Reuters reports:

Interpol should issue a warrant to help locate and arrest the head of Israel’s spy agency Mossad if the organization was responsible for the killing of a Hamas militant in Dubai, the emirate’s police chief said Thursday.

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Keeping Turkey out of Europe

Keeping Turkey out of Europe
By David Cronin, The Guardian, January 6, 2010

[Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel’s] opposition to Turkey’s bid for EU membership is explained by what a columnist in the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet accurately described as “basic facts not pronounced openly” on Monday. “Turkey is a Muslim country,” Mehmet Ali Birand wrote. “And Europe is not ready yet to accept a Muslim country in the EU.”

This anti-Turkish bias is tantamount to racism. Even though the EU institutions officially claim to cherish diversity, there is a tacit agreement among some of their most powerful leaders that the union must remain predominantly Christian. Herman Van Rompuy, the EU’s new president, is one of the few to have voiced this desire in a public forum (and that was long before his recent elevation in status). “The universal values which are in force in Europe, and which are also fundamental values of Christianity, will lose vigour with the entry of a large Islamic country such as Turkey,” he told a meeting at the Belgian parliament in 2004. [continued…]

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EU: East Jerusalem is occupied territory

Statement by EU High Representative Ashton at the EU Parliament debate on the Middle East Peace Process
European Parliament, Strasbourg, December 15, 2009

You have invited me here today to talk about our political work but also about the situation in East Jerusalem. This is an area of deep concern for us. East Jerusalem is occupied territory, together with the rest of the West Bank. The EU is opposed to the demolition of Palestinian homes, the eviction of Palestinian families, the construction of Israeli settlements and the route of the “separation barrier”. The EU is addressing these issues at political level, through diplomatic channels and in our public statements. We are also addressing the situation through practical assistance aimed at supporting the Palestinian population in East Jerusalem. For example, there is a lack of 1200 classrooms for the Palestinian children in the city, so we are helping to reinforce education facilities. In addition we enable Palestinian hospitals in East Jerusalem to remain viable and we do a lot of work with Palestinian young people in the city, who suffer from high rates of unemployment and psychological problems. To date in East Jerusalem the EU is implementing activities costing EUR 4.6 million.

Another aspect of concern for us is of course the situation in Gaza. The EU has consistently called for the flow of aid, trade and persons. We are deeply concerned about the daily living conditions of the Gazan people: since the January conflict donors have not been able to do reconstruction work and serious issues persist like the lack of clean drinking water. Israel should re-open the crossings without delay, which would allow a revival of private sector and a reduction of Gaza’s aid dependency. [continued…]

Israel: EU official’s ‘occupation’ remark casts pall on ties
By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz, December 18, 2009

Government officials in Jerusalem harshly criticized the new European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton, for her scathing remarks about the “Israeli occupation” in her maiden speech.

Ashton on Tuesday leveled scathing criticism at Israeli policy in her first speech as the European Union’s first high representative for foreign affairs and security policy.

The government officials in Jerusalem said they were surprised, dissatisfied and concerned that such a senior figure had expressed criticism before visiting Israel and learning the facts.

They said the remarks cast a pall over relations with the European Union, and that they were particularly angry that she had not welcomed the settlement construction freeze, as had her European colleagues. Continue reading →

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When will it be our time?

When will it be our time?
By Mustafa Barghouti, New York Times, December 16, 2009

I have lived my entire adult life under occupation, with Israelis holding ultimate control over my movement and daily life.

When young Israeli police officers force me to sit on the cold ground and soldiers beat me during a peaceful protest, I smolder. No human being should be compelled to sit on the ground while exercising rights taken for granted throughout the West.

It is with deepening concern that I recognize the Obama administration is not yet capable of standing up to Israel and the pro-Israel lobby. Our dream of freedom is being crushed under the weight of immovable and constantly expanding Israeli settlements.

Days ago, the State Department spokesman, Ian Kelly, managed only to term such illegal building “dismaying.” The Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, stands up and walks out on the U.S. envoy, George Mitchell, every time the American envoy mentions East Jerusalem.

And Javier Solana, just prior to completing his stint as European Union foreign policy chief, claimed Palestinian moves toward statehood “have to be done with time, with calm, in an appropriate moment.” He adds: “I don’t think today is the moment to talk about that.”

When, precisely, is a good time for Palestinian freedom? I call on Mr. Solana’s replacement, Catherine Ashton, to take concrete actions to press for Palestinian freedom rather than postpone it.

If Israel insists on hewing to antiquated notions of determining the date of another people’s freedom then it is incumbent on Palestinians to organize ourselves and highlight the moral repugnance of such an outlook.

Through decades of occupation and dispossession, 90 percent of the Palestinian struggle has been nonviolent, with the vast majority of Palestinians supporting this method of struggle. Today, growing numbers of Palestinians are participating in organized nonviolent resistance.

In the face of European and American inaction, it is crucial that we continue to revive our culture of collective activism by vigorously and nonviolently resisting Israel’s domination over us. [continued…]

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Turkey’s shifting diplomacy

Turkey’s shifting diplomacy
By Alastair Crooke, New York Times, November 28, 2009

While the United States and Europe have been struggling to find a path forward in the Israel-Palestine conflict, Afghanistan and Iran, the strategic ground upon which their assumptions about the region rest has begun to shift dramatically.

Most significantly, Turkey has finally shrugged off the straightjacket of a tight U.S. alliance, grown virtually indifferent to E.U. membership and turned its focus toward its former Ottoman neighbors in Asia and the Middle East.

Though not primarily meant as a snub to the West, this shift does nonetheless reflect growing discomfort and frustration with U.S. and E.U. policy, from the support of Israel’s action in Gaza to Iran to the frustrated impasse of the European accession process. It also resonates more closely with the Islamic renaissance that has been taking place within Turkey. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — Has Turkey grown virtually indifferent to EU membership? I don’t think so. Much more plausible is the likelihood that in pursuing its strategy “zero problems”, Turkey is merely following the paths of least resistance.

The indifference to Turkey’s EU membership is rooted inside Europe and among politicians who are pandering to the Christian right. Unless Europe utterly forgets its secular roots, sooner or later it will recognize that Turkish membership of the EU is in everyone’s interests.

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Europeans say U.S. lacks will on climate

Europeans say U.S. lacks will on climate
By John M Broder and James Kanter, New York Times, September, 2009

As world leaders gather in New York for the highest-level conference yet on climate change, European leaders are expressing growing unease about the United States’ stance in international talks aimed at reaching a global agreement in Copenhagen in December.

Officials of several European countries have cited what they see as a lack of political will on the part of the United States to adequately address climate change. The American reluctance to accept any agreement that would require legally binding and internationally enforceable targets for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions could doom the Copenhagen session, they said.

Ahead of this week’s climate talks at the United Nations, the Europeans also expressed little hope that the United States Senate would act on a climate bill before the Copenhagen talks begin. They said the lack of domestic consensus sows doubt about whether the United States can keep any pledges it makes at Copenhagen, either on the level of reductions in global warming emissions or on financial commitments to help developing nations adapt to a changing climate. [continued…]

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NEWS: EU and UN call on Israel not to cut services to Gaza

EU calls on Israel to reconsider sanctions against Gaza Strip
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz, September 20, 2007

The European Union joined on Thursday a United Nations call for Israel to reconsider its move to declare the Gaza Strip “hostile territory” and appealed for it not to cut key services to the Hamas-run territory.

Israel announced the move on Wednesday, saying it would disrupt electricity and fuel supplies to the coastal strip as a step to prevent continued rocket fire at Israeli civilians.

Following the cabinet’s decision, Israel Defense Forces officials on Thursday morning began formulating plans to limit services to the civilian population in Gaza. [complete article]

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