The EU Takes Israel To Task

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres will be the outsider at the Euro-Mediterranean Conference in Valencia. The Foreign ministers from the European Union and 12 Partners from Mediterranean states are coming together in the Spanish city on Monday and Tuesday.

The Middle East crisis is expected to dictate the talks and Peres can anticipate hearing criticism on Israel's actions.

In a statement released by the EU president Spain, the 15-nation bloc issued "a serious warning against any act of force carried out against the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, which could endanger the physical security of President Arafat and the (other) people there".

Only verbal pressure

The EU said it was willing to help find a legal solution "to the question of the people detained by the Palestinian Authority who are inside the Palestinian presidential complex". This is a reference to suspects that Israel wants handed over.

The EU requested that medical and humanitarian organizations be allowed immediate access to Palestinian towns. It stressed the importance of a United Nations mission to probe Israel's assault on the Jenin refugee camp.

Aside from these verbal appeals, Europe is not undertaking any further action in the Middle East conflict. At the EU Foreign Ministers meeting in Luxembourg last week, the bloc said it would not get directly involved in the crisis.

Instead, it wanted to rally behind US Secretary of State Colin Powell's peace mission. He, however, returned to the US last week with largely no results.

Sharp words for Europe

Israel’s Foreign Minister Peres has equated European criticism of Israel's attack on Jenin with anti-Semitism.

"I regret the European reaction," he told American supporters of Israel on Sunday. "Where in Europe, at the beginning, anti-Semitism was against the individual Jewish person, today I am afraid there is anti-Semitism against the Jewish state."

Peres was speaking to the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the largest pro-Israeli lobbying organization in the US. He was in Washington for talks with Secretary of State Powell.

The Foreign Minister subsequently headed on to Spain to attend the Euro-Mediterranean Conference, which opened Monday evening. He said he expected to feel lonely at the meeting in Valencia. "I shall represent a lonely voice, your lonely voice, our lonely voice, but the right voice."

The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership was launched in 1995 with the signature of the Barcelona Declaration by 27 States: the 15 EU member states together with Algeria, Cyprus, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Malta, Morocco, the Palestinian Authority, Syria, Tunisia and Turkey.