Election politics show Israel turns its back on 58 years of commitment to negotiating peace with its neighbors - by Helena Cobban
The billboards have been going up, and each night's TV schedule is punctuated by a 40-minute block of state-funded political advertisements. Israel's voters and 15 political parties are preparing for an election March 28.
The choices they face there have been transformed by the upheavals the country's politics have seen in the past eight months - the clear frontrunner is the Kadima party, meaning "forward," which did not even exist until November. The most distinctive feature of the new party's platform, moreover, is that it turns its back on 58 years of Israeli commitment to negotiating peace with its neighbors, promising voters instead that a Kadima-led government is ready and eager to draw Israel's borders quite unilaterally.
On March 8 the party's head, Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, spelled out his intention that by 2010, "Israel will be disengaged from the vast majority of the Palestinian population, within new borders." EU-DIGEST Editorial Comment: Unfortunately the EU seems to have no leverage on Israel's political decissions despite the fact that in terms of total trade, the EU is Israel’s major partner. To make matters worse, the EU, which used to have a historically friendly relationship with the Palestinians is now considered "in the same camp as the US and Israel" by the Palestinians. The so called "Middle East Quartet" consisting of Palestine, Israel, the US and the EU, who were to carry out the Middle East "Roadmap to Peace" have come to a dead end.
No comments:
Post a Comment