Mr President, I wept in front of the Israeli soldier who was preventing us attending to a wounded Palestinian. I wept for Ahmed who was lying on the ground, gesturing to us to come and help him. I wept – I have to say – for my powerlessness, our powerlessness. I wept for the Israeli soldier who had lost his humanity. I told him: ‘I am not crying because I am afraid of your machine gun: I am crying for you who are young. I am crying for Hetty Hillesum who, even in the concentration camp where she was interned, wanted to be the thinking heart of the barracks. I am crying because you are stopping me helping a dying man who – as you know – was not firing. I am crying because I saw you throw to the ground Palestinian policemen who had not fired on you and I saw you force them to kneel with their hands up against a wall. You forced them to strip naked and then you blindfolded them and tied their hands. They had all come out of their building – the front door had been knocked down by force – with their hands in the air. With them was an old man whom I have seen year after year in Ramallah. We would always greet one another. ‘Kiffech’ he would say to me. ‘Mapsuta’ I would reply. I am crying because, while the tank was firing on the building you forced us to evacuate – men, women and children – a young man was asking us for bread and cigarettes from the window of another house. I am crying because Mohammed Iska’fi, a doctor who had been wounded several times, did not hesitate to help a wounded Israeli soldier. And yet we have been stopped by tanks and by your machine gun. The wounded Israeli has been taken away; Ahmed is still lying in the street: you tore him away from us as soon as we had managed to lie him down on a makeshift stretcher. Are these normal scenes of war? Is there an unfortunate need for military intervention to protect the Israeli State against the wave of suicide bombers threatening to destroy it forever? I believe, together with many Israelis with whom we have been working for many years for a fair peace that recognises the right of both sides to their own state, that the only way to save the Israeli State is to end the Israeli military occupation. The spread of the settlements, the seizing of land, the curfews, the Palestinians imprisoned in their own villages, the summary executions, the ambulances prevented from reaching their destinations, the women giving birth at check points, the destruction of the Palestinian Authority: these are not mistakes or accidents. They are clear political policies dictated explicitly by Ariel Sharon, who, together with the parties of his coalition government, is demanding the transfer, in other words the deportation, of the Palestinian people, and not just the people of the occupied territories but the Arab citizens in Israel as well. The reoccupation of land and the destruction are evidence of the Israeli Government’s intention to annex the occupied territories. The policy of using suicide bombers, which, I am sad to say, is tragically no longer limited to Hamas or Jihad – organisations which, as a woman, I consider not just to be universally destructive but also to injure my rights too – must be stopped. There is neither moral nor political justification for these acts. I understand the Israelis’ fear, but I take courage from the organisation of Israeli and Palestinian relatives of victims who are saying, together: ‘Military occupation kills all people’. I take courage from a Palestinian, Jamal Zakout, who bears the scars of torture on his body, who says: ‘I am totally against attacks on civilians in Israel. Even though civilians are being killed by bombing, it is wrong to take the line ‘an eye for a eye, a tooth for a tooth’, it is wrong to say that because our own children and young people are dying every day theirs should die too. We must not lose our humanity. The future of the Palestinian people must not be shaped by the culture of death and revenge.’ The tragedy is two-fold. I wish we were all there, together with those Palestinians and those Israelis who continue to believe that the best form of security for all peoples, for all people, lies in the mutual acknowledgement of the right to exist and live in one’s own land in democracy and freedom. Shulamit Aloni, an Israeli woman, declares, every day: ‘I fought in the Hagannah to establish a Jewish state in Palestine and I find we have a colonialist state. I do not support this, I am ashamed of this army, of our governments who are destroying lives and all our human values in the name of security. I apologise to my group for using the common time available to us for such a personal testimony, although it is full of political relevance. We call upon the European Union to take up a firm, clear position in line with international law and the protection of human rights. It must use all the means available to it to compel the Israeli Government to withdraw from the occupied territories. It must recognise the State of Palestine with the 1967 borders. It must call for the immediate deployment of an international force. It must suspend the Association Agreement with Israel for Israel has patently violated Article 2; there is no need for further analysis. Peace is vital for the Palestinians, for the Israelis, for the entire region and for us too. I am not taking sides. I am for peace, we are for peace; there must be no victory on either side. But it needs to be established where the responsibilities lie and we must shoulder our responsibilities fully, so that we can all declare together that we want the reign of death, pain and suffering in Palestine and Israel to come to an end. (Applause)

Political group: GUE-NGL