Europe Must Reject Palestinian Unilateral Gambit, WJC Leader Dan Diker Tells Italian Lawmakers

Rome seminar on future of Middle East co-sponsored by World Jewish Congress

ROME, May 31, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- At a conference at the Italian Chamber of Deputies in Rome, organized by the foreign affairs think-tank SUMMIT of Italian MP Fiamma Nirenstein, co-sponsored by the World Jewish Congress (WJC) and attended by senior Italian government officials and parliamentarians, WJC Secretary General Designate Dan Diker has urged the European countries to oppose the planned endorsement by the United Nations of a unilaterally declared Palestinian state.

Noting that Italy and Germany were the only two European states that categorically rejected the Palestinian unilateral statehood scheme, Diker said: "The European Union is a witness signatory to the Oslo Interim Accords which continue to govern relations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel until a negotiated final peace deal. If the EU were to back a premature resolution at the UN to endorsing a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines, it would severely undermine its integrity as an honest broker. Europe's credibility test is whether or not it will reject the Palestinian unilateral gambit."

The seminar, entitled 'New scenarios in the Middle East: the Fatah-Hamas agreement, unilateral Palestinian declaration of statehood and threat of a Third Intifada', featured panelists including Senator Luigi Compagna, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and Umberto Ranieri, former undersecretary for foreign affairs. Speakers agreed that Hamas constitutes the main obstacle to peace as it has no intention to recognize Israel's right to exist.

Diker also noted that the Hamas-Fatah regime was a non-starter by European and US law. "Mahmoud Abbas has thrown sand in eyes of President Obama by accepting his support for a Palestinian state and then partnering with a terror group such as Hamas," Diker said. He pointed out that Hamas was not just a more Islamic version of Fatah, but had spawned terror masterminds such as Khaled Sheikh Mohammad of the Kuwaiti Muslim Brotherhood, one of the engineers of the 9/11 terror attacks, and Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian cleric who was a mentor to Osama Bin Laden.

Bassam Eid, the founder and director of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, stressed the failures of the Palestinian leadership, specifically in Gaza, where after Israel's disengagement in 2005, Hamas invested more money in missiles against the Israeli civilian population than in meeting the needs of the population in the coastal enclave. Eid also explained that Palestinian civil society had accepted the need for coexistence with Israel more than the Palestinian leadership dared to show publicly or in the negotiations. Eid said hardly any Palestinian believed that refugees would eventually return to what is today Israel. He urged the international community to take more of an interest in the nature of a future Palestinian state, in order to prevent it from becoming a dictatorship like other states in the region. "We don't need another Gaddafi," he concluded.

In her closing remarks, MP Fiamma Nirenstein reasserted the need to have Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accepting Netanyahu's invitation to declare in front of his population that he recognizes the State of the Jews. "This is a necessary precondition for a real peace process between Israelis and Palestinians."

SOURCE World Jewish Congress