EU trying to 'provoke' Israeli government, analyst says

BRUSSELS - EU plans to call for East Jerusalem to be the capital of a future Palestinian state have been described as a "provocation" of Israel's right-wing government by a key figure in the history of the Middle East Peace Process.

Israeli daily Haaretz on Tuesday (1 December) published a leaked copy of a draft statement on Israel to be adopted by EU foreign ministers next week.

The text - which is likely to undergo changes during internal EU discussions in the run-up to the ministerial meeting - said that peace talks should lead to: "an independent, democratic, contiguous and viable state of Palestine, comprising the West Bank and Gaza and with East Jerusalem as its capital."

"The European Union will not recognise any changes to the pre-1967 borders," it added, in reference to Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem and parts of the West Bank following the so-called Six Day War.

The draft statement comes amid ongoing expansion of Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land under the current right-wing government of Benjamin Nentanyahu, in a process creating facts on the ground which are likely to complicate a two-state solution.

"The policy of the EU has been since 1967 that this [the Middle East peace talks] should be based on the '67 line and that Israel is on the other side of this line," retired left-wing Israeli politician Yossi Beilin told EUobserver in a phone interview.

Mr Beilin, who gave up his seat in parliament last year, is a former deputy foreign minister who played a key role in earlier negotiations on Palestine, including in the so-called Oslo Accords and the Geneva Initiative.

"It's not a surprise that when you have a right-wing government in Israel and someone like Lieberman is foreign minister, that such an initiative comes forward. Sometimes saying the obvious is a provocation. If you had a government [in Israel] which was doing everything it could to support the peace process then such initiatives would not be on the desk," he explained, referring to Israel's hawkish foreign minister.

"They are saying this because, on the one hand it is obvious, but on the other hand to tell the Israeli government that the world is still out there and that it has not given up."

The Israeli foreign ministry reacted angrily to the Haaretz leak on Tuesday.

"The process being led by Sweden harms the European Union's ability to take part as a significant mediator in the political process," an official foreign ministry statement said.

An Israeli diplomatic source in Brussels added that: "A one sided approach and an effort to selectively prejudge elements that have to be discussed and negotiated between the parties will not be helpful in reaching this goal."

"We doubt whether such an approach, if eventually adopted, will help in portraying the EU as a credible contributor."

The row follows months of mounting tension between Israel and Sweden, the current holder of the EU's rotating presidency, which has repeatedly attacked Mr Netanyahu on the settlements issue.

Swedish diplomats declined to comment on the draft document. But a number of EU officials voiced surprise that the provisional statement evoked such a hostile reaction.

"Jerusalem should be the shared capital of two states. I think this is a position which has been stated often enough," Lutz Gellner, the spokesman of the EU's new foreign relations chief, Catherine Ashton, said.

Palestine's envoy to Brussels, Leila Shahid, told EUobserver that the dispute is an Israeli attempt to pressure the EU to soften its statement ahead of the foreign ministers' meeting.

"Israel is trying, by leaking to Haaretz, to interfere in autonomous EU decision-making. It's a campaign by Israel to prevent the EU from playing a positive role in the resolution of this conflict," she said.