IX.

EUROPE, ISRAEL AND THE PALESTINIAN QUESTION.

THE RADICAL PARTY'S PROPOSAL

ABSTRACT: In the ninth part of his report to the Radical Party Congress in Budapest, First Party Secretary Sergio Stanzani confronts the Israeli-Palestinian question and maintains the need of an active role for the European Community in resolving this conflict.

(The 35th Congress of the Radical Party, Budapest, April 22-26, 1989)

We have often been accused in Italy and Europe of being unilaterally aligned with the Israelis. We do not think this is so.

If there has been a unilateral aspect in our policy, this has been to oppose a generalised unilateralism, entirely anti-Israel, on the part of the European left which has been disposed to recognise one right only: that of the Arabs and Palestinians right to independence.

These leftists have always been ready to scream and fill the streets only to protest the supposed crimes of Israel while remaining silent about the far worse crimes committed by the Arab countries against their own citizens or against Palestinian refugees. In the same way they have been silent in recent weeks and months when Syrian arms have been turned against the Lebanese Christian-Maronite population, killing them, chasing them away, subjecting them and compromising their rights.

In reality we have been the only European party to ask for the resignation of the Shamir-Rabin government for their responsibility in using suppression in the occupied territories. And we did not wait for the <> in order to reprove the Jerusalem government for the serious responsibility of having fought the war by military means alone and not, as they should have, with the means that could have brought victory of law, civil rights and democracy.

There is another unilateralism of which we do not partake, and it is that exhibited by the European governments and Community which only seem capable of putting pressure on Israel to negotiate with the OLP and to recognise the Palestinian State while not assuming any responsibility for guaranteeing the security of the State of Israel and full political and civil rights to the future Palestinian State along with the conditions for peaceful co-existence, not only for these two states but for Jordan and Egypt as well.

This is the reason that has induced us to appeal at the same time to the government of Israel and the European Community for a direct involvement of the Community in the solution to the Middle East question.

We have proposed Israel's membership in the Community and solutions to be explored with and possibly within the Community ambit. This is also the reason that induced us to hold a meeting of our Federal Council in Jerusalem.

In an article published in the major Israeli papers, Marco Pannella wrote:

"With the imminent advent of the year 2,000, to fight to create or defend a national state - even more when it is one of minimal size - is nonsense, a strategic error as well as an one of ideals and politics. This fact, which has been understood by countries such as Germany, France, Great Britain, and Italy, is also true for Israel and those who are fighting for a Palestinian state. But all parties and the entire world seem convinced of the contrary."

As the first ones to have had the courage to say and propose these things, we were treated with diffidence and suspicion in Israel, with diffidence and suspicion by European public opinion.

Then this idea of the direct involvement of the Community began to make inroads. First it was taken up by the ex Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi even if in the reductive form of an offer by the Community to administer the occupied territories during a transition period preceding independence. Today we see the idea of a participation of the State of Israel and a future Palestinian State in the European Community being proposed by an Italian committee. And it is the subject matter of an encounter between this committee with Israeli and Palestinian representatives.

But we are very far from substantial modifications in the governments of the twelve [EC countries, ed.] and the Community as a whole. Here too, Europe continues to be missing and to evade its responsibilities.