In true Euro form - Former European leaders call on EU to enforce ban on Israeli settlements, but obviously not being very concerned about barbarities that occur in Gaza

Netanyahu at meeting with Catherine Ashton,
EU High Rep for Foreign Affairs, June 20, 2013

Former leaders and senior officials from European Union member states have called on EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton to stick to new guidelines limiting interaction with Israeli entities beyond the pre-1967 lines, despite Israel-generated pressure.

Army Radio said that the angry Israeli response to the guidelines had taken some in Europe by surprise, and that while no one had expected Israel to accept the move without some reaction, the ferocity was unanticipated.

The letter by the group, which includes former NATO secretary-general and Ashton's predecessor at the EU Javier Solana and former Spanish foreign minister Angel Moratinos, also called for the guidelines to be enforced with regards to Horizon 2020 - a 80 billion euro R&D project whose Israel involvement was called into question following the announcement of the guidelines.

Responding angrily to the letter, European Jewish Congress President Dr. Moshe Kantor on Monday called it "a danger to peace as it hands one side a political victory without having to compromise and deepens the Palestinian feeling that they can gain more outside of negotiations than in them.”
In a full-page advert in Monday’s Financial Times, Kantor said the letter was discriminatory, and would ultimately harm the success of peace efforts currently underway for the first time in three years.

“From the well over one hundred territorial disputes in the world, the European Union has mandated the creation of a clause in every agreement denying European funding to, and cooperation with, institutions from only one nation involved in a territorial dispute: Israel,” Kantor wrote.

“What makes the situation far worse is that the European Union is abrogating agreements that it signed and witnessed,” he said. "The Oslo Accords, the basis for the peace negotiations, specifically stipulated that the current status of the territories, and its residents, will not be changed or harmed ahead of final status negotiations, to which the parties have recently returned."
Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon also accused the former EU officials of harming the peace process. "Former European officials never cease to amaze," he said. "They have crossed the line of criticism of the State of Israel. I expect the European leadership to condemn this move."

Ashton said last month that the guidelines were simply "putting down on paper what is currently the EU position."
Its interesting that present and former European leaders are so adamant on sticking to this position whilst at the same time ignoring the plight of 'Palestinians' in Gaza and the West Bank under the brutal administration of Hamas or the PA. They choose to ignore the child molestation, murders, oppression and cruelty that occurs under these terror administrations and instead take a more easy option and pressurise a genuine democracy that will not respond violently, as Hamas or the PA would do.

The meddling European leaders and former leaders would do better at calling for a halt in European funding to these barbaric administrations which regularly break every human rights law created anywhere in the world, and instead support a genuine democracy - Israel and thus help restore peace to the middle east as Israel so badly wants.




source
Jerusalem Post