Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the situation in the Middle East appears to be hopeless. After the removal of the Iraqi dictator, we had all hoped for a new and peaceful order in the Middle East. This hope proved to be false, and it appears as if all efforts for peace, and the roadmap, have come to nothing. Mahmud Abbas has been replaced by Ahmed Kurei after only four months in power. Personalities are of course important, and we also know that the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and the Palestinian President Yasser Arafat are the decision-makers, but, in essence, this is about the people of these countries. Prime Minister Sharon is democratically elected; so is President Arafat. I do not know whether his election meets all the democratic criteria, but he is elected. He is also a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, something that should perhaps spur the Israeli Government and the Palestinians to get back to the common ground that President Arafat once shared with the Israeli Prime Minister Rabin. We are all familiar with the enormous problems that we face. In our group, we are perfectly clear in our own minds that we can in no way justify the suicide attacks, which hold human life in contempt. They constitute an abuse of the young people to whom promises of paradise are made, and they involve the murder of other innocent people. They bring about a vicious circle of violence; another result of them is Israel’s death lists, which we can in no way approve of, since – as Commissioner Lamy and Mr Antonione have said – it is not only the hunted criminals, or those assumed to be such, but also a very large number of innocent people who end up being killed. A policy of ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ will bring no resolution. Just as we hear Hamas and Islamic Jihad speaking the language of hatred, we also see the deeds of hatred, and all this leads to further escalations. There are also Israel’s illegal settlements in Western Jordan, which are a constant provocation for the people in Palestine. Let me quote this from the 8 September issue of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: ‘The symbolic removal of a few containers in illegal settlements west of the Jordan was too little for it to have been capable of becoming an encouraging experience of success for the Palestinians.’ The building of a wall rams home the deep sense of constant humiliation felt in Palestine. We must seek to enable both Israel and Palestine to live within secure borders, and we declare that all the people of that region – Israelis and Palestinians alike – are endowed with the same dignity. That is why, despite the apparent hopelessness, there is no alternative to pressing on with the efforts towards peace. I am speaking personally rather than on behalf of my group when I say that I do not believe that a peaceful solution will be possible without an international military peacekeeping force. Unless an international military peacekeeping force is used to keep the two sides off each other, I do not believe that a solution will be possible. Nor can we expect the Americans to do everything – their elections mean, in any case, that they are less capable of acting in this area. I rejoice at the common purpose that is apparent here, and it is as the European Union that we should persist in our efforts together with the USA, with the UN, and with Russia. We must persist in our efforts, for it is the people of the Middle East who are at stake.

Political group: PPE-DE