How the votes line up on Sweden's anti-Israel resolution
The JPost reports on the vote on a Swedish resolution that would recognize the imaginary city of 'east' Jerusalem as the capital of the imaginary country of 'Palestine.' The proposal by Sweden, which this month is winding down its tenure as rotating president of the EU, is also reportedly backed by Ireland, Belgium, Britain and Malta, while Italy, Holland, Germany, the Czech Republic, Romania, Poland and Slovenia have come out against the wording of the text.The picture at the top is Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt.
France has also opposed the draft on the grounds that more support should be given to Netanyahu for the settlement moratorium, and also because of a feeling that while France supported Jerusalem becoming the capital of two states in a future solution, the modalities of how this would be done should be left to the negotiations.
Netanyahu has taken an active part in lobbying against the resolution, discussing the matter with a number of international leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, whose country takes over the rotating presidency of the EU in January.
Jerusalem has also been in contact with the US on the matter, trying to persuade American officials to impress upon the Europeans the ramifications of adopting a resolution that Israel feels pre-judges negotiations.
According to the analysis, the resolution will pass, but it will be changed, possibly enough to be not recognizable. Still, in light of this resolution, it is difficult to understand how the European Union can conceive of itself as an honest broker and why it believes that it is worthy of any role in making or keeping peace in this region.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:55 PM
2 Comments:
The Europeans should ask themselves how they can deny Israel's sovereignty over its capital and still pretend to be honest brokers. That's going to simply be another nail in the already moribund peace process. They don't really get the big picture in Brussels.
It is imperative that world Jewry responds by demanding the Jewish gold returned that they received from the Nazis
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