Mr President, there is no doubt that the Roadmap is a hope to which we must cling without allowing our political judgment to be clouded or losing our clear vision of the incidents taking place daily in Palestine and Israel. There is no doubt that the European Union as a whole and the resolute, committed work of the special envoy, Mr Moratinos, have played a major part in drawing up the Roadmap and helping the Palestinian Authority to undertake the series of reforms laid down in the Roadmap, which – as we are quite aware – does not resolve all the issues but is certainly important. Egypt too has played an active role. It is essential, however, that the whole Quartet is involved and supports the talks. It would be too great a risk and, in any case, a mistake to leave management to the USA alone. At the same time, it is essential that we support the talks at all stages without recommitting the errors of the Oslo Agreement when, after the great handshakes, the two parties were left alone with very different power relations, with the result that violence and oppression prevailed instead of peace. We are all aware, I regret to say, of the complicity and subordination of some European leaders in the face of the dominance of the US administration and of the tendency shown by the Israeli Government not to value Europe, Russia and the UN as interlocutors, considering them – wrongly – to be biased towards the Palestinians: wrongly in that it is a question not of bias but of not renouncing the law and justice. In other words, the reality is that international law is not binding for some of these countries. In any case, if it were, if the law were being respected, the issue of Palestine and Israel would have been resolved a long time ago, at least when the PLO opted in 1988 at Algiers to coexist peacefully with the State of Israel and to have its own state in the territories occupied in 1977. The imbalance, symmetry and situation of Palestinians and Israelis, of occupied and occupiers, are not trivial considerations. Quite the opposite: it is essential to stress that it is the Israeli army which is occupying: it is not the Palestinian Authority which is building settlements and holding Palestinians prisoner. The utterly despicable terrorist acts against civilians are perpetrated by Palestinian extremists, not by an army duly equipped with weapons, although in saying this I am not absolving the Palestinian Authority of errors and weaknesses which have harmed the cause of a just peace. The Roadmap offering a possibility of peace for both peoples is, once again, a challenge and a source of hope, but if we genuinely want Palestinians and Israelis to live in peace and security, we do, of course, need to call upon the Palestinian Authority to make every endeavour to stop the terrorist acts – and Abu Mazen, with the support of President Arafat, is pursuing the path of dialogue with great determination to stop the violence and prevent a civil war – but we must also call very strongly upon Ariel Sharon to comply with the initial stages of the Roadmap and bring to an end the targeted assassinations which seem to be intended precisely to provoke terrorist reactions. Mr Sharon has said that three and a half million Palestinians cannot be ruled with military occupation. Then let him act upon his words, as Gedeon Levi, a Ha’aretz reporter says. Let him remove the checkpoints and stop the hunger and the demolition of houses, let the sick and nursing mothers have access to hospitals, let children no longer see their parents being beaten up or humiliated in the dead of night. This will lend impetus to the peace process. Then there is a monstrosity which Commissioner Patten mentioned too: the wall, the wall of separation, of apartheid, of annexing of territory. It is eight metres high and 364 kilometres long, protected by barbed wire and with electronic controls. The wall represents annexing of territory: 30 water wells seized, 16 Palestinian villages separated from cultivatable land. Ariel Sharon has given orders for construction work on the wall to carry on even during the night, and 374 kilometres are not enough for him – the banks of the Jordan are to be cut off by the wall too. We must exert pressure with the instruments we have to bring about the creation of two peoples and two states. We support Kofi Annan’s call, backed by the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, to send an international peacekeeping force to stop Palestinian and Israeli deaths. It is already long overdue.

Political group: GUE-NGL