Cette lettre rappelle utilement l'attitude des Européens, au moins pour ce qui concerne certaines éminences auto-désignées, dont les socialistes français
Lionel Jospin et
Hubert Védrine, qui blâment Israël, traitent les Palestiniens comme des enfants, se désolent de la diplomatie américaine considérée par ces invétérés donneurs de leçons comme trop favorable à Israël. Les Israéliens ne manqueront pas de traiter cette lettre avec la dérision qu'elle mérite et les Palestiniens comprendront que ce genre d'attitude ne fait que diminuer l'influence que les Européens ont sur Israël et que de ce fait l'Union Européenne n'est pas en mesure d'offrir grand chose aux deux parties. Le parti pris, l'indigence du raisonnement et le refus d'affronter les faits dans cette lettre suggèrent tous que la situation de changera pas de sitôt. Et on pourra ajouter à ces remarques que l'Europe traverse une terrible crise mais que certaines élites responsables de cette situation désastreuse estiment qu'elles peuvent sans la moindre gêne continuer à donner des leçons au monde entier, désigner les bons et les mauvais, les innocents et les coupables... Il n'est pas étonnant que les citoyens font si peu confiance aux politiques!
Elliot Abrams, senior fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, analyse la lettre rédigée par 19 éminences européennes [voir ci-dessous] qui critiquent Israël - sans mentionner une seule fois l'incitation à la haine des Juifs de la part de l'Autorité palestinienne et du Hamas ni de leur corruption - dans un article intitulé
Why Europe can't bring peace to the Middle East.
Lady Catherine Ashton, the EU's top foreign policy official, has received a remarkable letter from the "European Eminent Persons Group on the Middle East Peace Process." This self-selected collectivity might more accurately be called the "Formerly Eminent Persons Group," inasmuch as the first word describing each one of its members is "Former," but I suppose that these Formerly Eminent Persons do indeed also represent the views of Currently Eminent European Persons.
The letter is important in one way: It shows that European official and elite thinking continues to blame Israel for everything related to the so-called peace process. To take one example, the letter states that:
"We have watched with increasing disappointment over the past five years the failure of the parties to start any kind of productive discussion, and of the international community under American and/or European leadership to promote such discussion. We have also noted with frustration and deep concern the deteriorating standards of humanitarian and human rights care of the population in the Occupied Territories." [...]
The letter's greatest sins are those that are quite familiar in letters from Europe, whether from Formerly Eminent Persons or from Currently Eminent Persons: the sin of blaming everything on Israel and nothing on the Palestinians, demanding nothing of the Palestinians, and treating the Palestinians like objects rather than people.
Nowhere does the letter mention the issue of anti-Semitic broadcasting and hate speech in Palestinian official media, nor the matter of the glorification of terrorism and terrorists by the PA, and the impact such conduct has on prospects for peace.
The letter takes a shot at U.S. President
Barack Obama, saying that all he said and did during his trip to Israel
"gave no indication of action to break the deep stagnation." Just talk from the Americans, you see; we are all, including Obama, seen as coddling Israel (and we do not even have Formerly Eminent Persons writing letters).