Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Europe-Israel ties at high point

le relazioni tra Israele ed Europa vanno migliorando.
http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/news/article/200804300430israeleurope.html
Europe-Israel ties at high point
Dinah Spritzer
After the lows of the intifada years, ties between Europe and Israel
have grown stronger thanks to new E.U. members, Europe's recent
experiences with Islamic terrorism and Israel's moves toward
disengagement from the Palestinians.
Published: 04/30/2008
PRAGUE (JTA) -- When Israel asked for European troops, including
Germans, to patrol the Israel-Lebanon border area following Israel’s
2006 war with Hezbollah, it was a salient sign of how far European
ties with Israel have come in recent years.
“Who would have ever thought that German soldiers would be charged --
and trusted -- to protect Israelis 65 years after the Holocaust?”
observed Oded Eran, formerly Israel’s ambassador to the European Union
and now head of the World Jewish Congress office in Jerusalem.
The Germany-Israel bond was further underscored in March when German
Chancellor Angela Merkel addressed the Israeli Knesset in German and
held an unprecedented joint Cabinet meeting with the Israeli
government.
Across Europe, similar signs show the warming relations with Israel,
at least on the political and institutional levels.
Earlier this month, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk visited Israel
in what both sides deemed a turning point in bilateral relations since
Poland became a democracy in 1990. Last October, Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert was received warmly in Britain when he visited 10
Downing St. And for the first time in 25 years, France has a
president, Nicolas Sarkozy, keen on making the country's foreign
policy friendlier toward Israel.
“I cannot recall a time when there has been such a positive flurry of
diplomatic exchange between Israel and Europe,” said Arye Mekel, a
spokesman for Israel's Foreign Ministry.
Many diplomats and analysts say Europe-Israeli relations are in a new
era of growing cooperation and understanding following years of
mistrust and recrimination.
“Relations have improved and matured substantially in recent years,”
said Ran Curiel, Israel’s ambassador to the 27-country European Union
in Brussels.
The improvement in ties is a consequence of quietly enhanced economic
cooperation, the European Union’s expansion to include unabashedly pro-
Israel countries from the former Eastern bloc such as Poland and the
Czech Republic, and the replacement of the Palestinian leader Yasser
Arafat with the more tractable Mahmoud Abbas as president of the
Palestinian Authority.
Still, public opinion across Europe, according to polls and media
reports, continues to cast Israel in an unfavorable light. This is
evident in the negative media coverage of Israel during the Second
Lebanon War in the summer of 2006, stepped-up criticism of Israel by
European nongovernmental organizations and ongoing British trade union
calls for boycotts of Israeli goods and academics.
“The media and church institutions since 2000 have tended to adopt a
position which suggests people don’t support Israel’s right to defend
itself, which means they don’t support its right to exist,” said Robin
Shepherd, a senior fellow at Chatham House, a London think tank.
“What is still missing is to correct the [public’s] image of Israel,”
said the secretary-general of the European Jewish Congress, Serge
Cwajgenbaum. “The image is still unbalanced.”
On the governmental level, however, ties between Europe and Israel
appear to be at a high point.
Some examples: European governments across the continent are holding
celebrations for Israel's 60th birthday. Israel trusts Europe to train
P.A. security forces and oversee the international funding of the
Palestinian Authority. Germany plays a key role lobbying for European
support for Israel. And the British government has proven to be a
staunch ally of Israel, domestic criticism of its policy
notwithstanding.
In recent years, Israel has gained many trade and aid benefits
associated with E.U. membership due to the adoption in 2005 of the
union's European Neighborhood Policy. One-third of Israeli exports
last year went to the European Union. Plans call for Israeli
cooperation in the European space agency, and the sharing of
intelligence is rising.
Such ties once were linked to Israeli progress in the peace process.
That's no longer the case, Curiel says.
“You don’t hear calls for sanctions against Israel anymore every time
there is a disagreement about Israeli policy,” he said.
This is a relatively new development. European politicians weaned on
the milk of post-World War II rapprochement long have castigated
Israeli military operations viewed by Israeli officials as vital to
survival.
During the early years of the second intifada, which began in 2000,
E.U. External Affairs Minister Chris Patten consistenly harangued
Israeli leaders over the country's targeted assassinations of
Palestinian terrorists, the West Bank security fence and Jewish
settlement growth.
Europe wasn't always tilted against Israel. In the early years of the
state, when Israel was seen as the underdog, it found friends and arms
suppliers in Europe.
That changed following the 1967 Six-Day War.
“This is partly ideology, and partly oil, as Arabs were threatening to
turn off the spigot,” said Jonathan Rynhold, a professor of political
science at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University and a researcher at the Begin-
Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
Israeli-European discord worsened when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982.
“Whatever is left of the image of plucky little democratic Israel,
darling of the left, becomes to some the big bully Israel, the brutal
occupying country,” Rynhold said. “The first intifada, starting in
1987, just magnifies this negative picture.”
Hope emerged during myriad episodes of negotiations, but the collapse
of the Oslo peace process and the second intifada sent Israel-Europe
ties to a new low.
In 2004, after the International Court of Justice at The Hague
condemned the West Bank security fence, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon told then-European Union Council Secretary-General Javier
Solana that the court must think “Jewish blood is cheap.”
Sharon also called the European Union, which had backed the court’s
conclusion, biased against Israel.
But the ensuing few years changed the tenor of the relationship
significantly.
In 2004 and 2007, the European Union extended membership to 11 post-
communist countries that are notably more pro-American and pro-Israel
than older E.U. members. These countries, associating inaction with
appeasement and noting their suffering under the Soviets, don’t share
Western Europe’s aversion to Israeli military actions.
In Madrid in 2004 and in London the next year, deadly terrorist
attacks by Islamic extremists gave European leaders a better sense of
what Israel was facing.
Perhaps most important, Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip in
2005 dispelled the European conception that Israel is unwilling to
make sacrifices for peace.
“Israel’s formal acceptance of the two-state solution cemented a new,
closer understanding between top-level Israeli and European
politicians,” Curiel said.
But many European politicians remain upset about Israeli settlement
activity and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, according to the
vice president of the European Parliament, Britain's Edward McMillon
Scott.
“If Israel can pull out of Gaza, Israel can pull out of the occupied
territories,” he told JTA. “Yes, it is true there is more cooperation
on the institutional level -- call it normalization -- but after the
invasion of southern Lebanon, I think many of us thought Israel had
lost its bearings.”
Some other sticking points remain. The European Union refuses to label
Lebanon's Hezbollah a terrorist organization, E.U. funds go to anti-
Israel nongovernmental organizations, and Israel wants Europe to do
more to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
Still, Israeli diplomats say, their concerns at least are being heard,
even if they are not all being addressed.

Is there any truth to the rumor that the vatican controlled by Skull
and Bones Society?
Michael Kipp