ABSTRACT: On the basis of a positive evaluation of Bettino Craxi's bill to charge the European Community with the task of administering Israel's occupied territories, the author points out the obstacles to the achievement of this bill. First of all, the absence of European supranational institutions capable of conducting an authoritative and unitary foreign policy.

(Radical News n. 87 of 28th April 1988, from Il Giorno 25 April 1988)

With his bill to Europe, that is, to the EEC, to administer Israel's occupied territories, Bettino Craxi has greatly contributed in raising the quality of the debate and of the attention - both stagnating, purulent and useless, for years - on the Middle East.

The bill, which is excellent, is however difficult to apply, owing to that "Euro-optimism", disastrously prevailing in these last decades, which reasons only in terms of "single market" (in 1992); in other words, nothing but a savage and destructive jungle, as if the political, constitutional and democratic authority of the United States of Europe, or European Union, were insufficient to guarantee its mechanisms.

In this occasion as in others, we can ascertain that the cost of a non-Europe has been and is exorbitant: from a historical, political, economic, technological and social point of view. This essential vacuum of power and of politics, caused by the anachronistic and ruinous "reserved powers" of twelve national state administrations, directly or indirectly destabilizes the Middle East and Africa as well, leaving them a prey to the destructive interests of the multinationals of the "military-industrial" and "agroindustrial" complex, with their national components, just as it favours the action of any other force that can benefit from a destabilization of these and entire other regions of the world.

Our government will therefore need to act immediately, mobilizing the diplomatic structures and organs, which are increasingly deprived of their natural functions, if it wants Bettino Craxi's bill, if backed by the majority, to be included in the agenda of the proceedings of the European Council of Hannover, to be held on 12th or 13th of May.

I would like to take the occasion to express all our concern to Minister Andreotti, as it seems that nothing concrete has been done so that the goals and the subjects established by the Parliament's Foreign Committee and supported by the government also be discussed in Hannover, and which the European Parliament is about to accept with a "solemn statement". When taking new initiatives, which are, as such, not sufficiently considered by the others in their value and urgency, it is necessary to work coherently, and to respect the proclaimed priorities, if necessary even going against the mainstream. At present the European Community is living almost as an outlaw, as a "factual power", because it hasn't been achieved according to the previsions and the assumptions with which it was established: treaties that have been ignored, surreptitiously reformed according to new norms, the adoption of practices which have turned it into a political non-Europe, a non-Europe with respect to a society based on a system of la

ws. It is absent from the point of view of a common defence, security and military policy.

This reality is sure to be challenged in Hannover, at least by governments such as the Danish and British ones, which have accepted the goal of the 1992 "common market" with reluctance and reservations evident to all, even if often not expressed formally.

Much will depend on the one hand on the German and French position (the latter should be favourable if Mitterrand is re-elected), and, on the other hand, on our government's capacity to take political and diplomatic initiatives. The government should therefore act, adding the bill for a controlled European administration of the Palestinian occupied territories to the "package" of reforms that the Goria government had promised to support in Hannover before the Italian Parliament (thus corresponding to the European Parliament's imminent mandate in this sense). As far as Israel is concerned, I believe this country, its democratic public opinion, the power of the Jews of the diaspora, all deserve full credit, as they will surely be faithful to the democratic and civil destiny of their homeland. The worst thing that could happen is that the current Israeli political leadership, sclerotic, violent and impotent, in power only thanks to comprehensible feelings of fear which it itself contributes to create in the pub

lic opinion, will challenge the bill, questioning the conditions of its enforcement. But nothing more.

We radicals have been long since been repeating that Israel's democratic and civil destiny must be considered as "internal" to that of the United States of Europe, and that Israel's adhesion to the European Union is the condition for the solution of the Palestinian problem, and the condition to tackle the real and tragical problems afflicting the Middle East (which are mainly others).

More than once we expressed this belief and this intention formally, before Heads of State, Foreign Ministers, Knesset deputies, the Israeli press. Our radical companions in Israel, simple militants or deputies, share this approach and this goal. Bettino Craxi's initiative therefore receives all our attention: we agree completely; we view this bill as a partial and effective initiative in the direction we have been pointing to for years, in vain.

It is my hope that we will also overcome the dissent, which we confirm in an even firmer way, over the acknowledgement of the PLO. The PLO is the PLO; that is, a political-military organization, and not a temporary government. To make a comparison with Algeria, it is a National Liberation Front, not a Gpra. It is no chance that the situation is such. As the Palestinian leadership, the PLO has grown, and has operated, in these last years, refusing thousands and thousands of citizens coming from those territories the right to settle down, citizens who have integrated elsewhere - having no alternative -, in the national societies that host them, as professionals, intellectuals, often as democrats, for whom the fundamental human rights, of thought, of opinion, political, social and even simply "juridical" and legal rights are not a luxury, but the inalienable complement of any population and individual together with, and not after, the right to national "independence".

In Israel's occupied territories there are also many exponents and leaders of those countries which would be closer to the Palestinian leadership, which actively participates in the government of Jordan, but who are not free to express themselves, owing to the ruinous policies conducted by the PLO and by Shamir, who still obeys the laws of the violent liberation policy of his youth, incapable of ruling the country in a congruent and appropriate way.

To acknowledge the PLO would represent a terrible mistake, would mean acknowledging an organization that has the "merits" of a war and of a battle, that established itself on this and that is capable only of this, not of ruling.

To confuse the two bills is therefore not advisable.

The bill for the acknowledgment of the PLO weakens the "European" bill, and we hope that Craxi too will realize this.