Europeans for Jerusalem Slam Final Statement of EU Capitulated Foreign Ministers

[ 12/12/2009 - 08:13 AM ]

BRUSSELS, (PIC)--

The coalition of Europeans for Jerusalem on Friday strongly denounced the final statement issued by foreign ministers of the European Union (EU), saying that the statement was not up to the Union’s obligations towards maintaining justice, international law and human rights.

The coalition said that the European ministers backtracked on the first encouraging statement proposed by the Swedish presidency of the EU on the issue of occupied Jerusalem (But the statement was weakened as a result of the objections of the Zionist French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, and his Israeli masters).

The coalition warned that the Israeli occupation government would deal with this reversal of European positions as an acknowledgement of the fait accompli it created in Jerusalem and would seek to invest it as it did many times before to perpetuate its occupation practices and violations in the city taking advantage of the considerable imbalance of power between the parties to the conflict.

It stated that it was regrettable that the Europeans turned a blind eye to the fact that the regime of the Israeli occupation government in Jerusalem, east or west, is a colonial entity that no longer exists in the world today and is based blatantly on racism.

The coalition noted that any serious settlement process cannot succeed by derogating the rights of the Palestinian people and being biased in favor of Israel against them.

In another related context, outgoing UNRWA commissioner-general Karen Abu Zayd said Thursday that Israel’s coercive expulsion of Palestinian families from the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in east Jerusalem violates international law.

She said her remarks in a news conference held during her visit to Palestinian families whose homes were confiscated by Israeli settlers under military protection in the neighborhood.

“The UN rejects Israel’s claims that these cases are a matter for municipal authorities and domestic courts. Such acts are in violation of Israel’s obligations under international law,” Abu Zayd stressed.

“It is fitting that on my last official visit to Jerusalem as UNRWA commissioner-general, and on international human rights day, I should come to the Shaikh Jarrah neighborhood of the city, where the failure of the international community to fulfill the promises of the universal declaration [of human right] is so acutely felt and where the pain and ugliness of dispossession and occupation are so tragically in evidence,” she underlined.

In a separate incident, illegal Israeli settlers on Friday appropriated a Palestinian land belonging to Palestinian citizens near the settlement of Najhot, west of Doura village in Al-Khalil.

According to local sources, the illegal Israeli settlers established two mobile homes on the land and fenced it with barbed wire without any intervention from Israeli troops.