Diplomatic relations between Israel and the European Union are coming under ever-increasing strain. A new low was reached last week when the Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr David Levy, reportedly rejected an EU proposal for restarting Palestinian peace talks without so much as reading it. The extraordinary "diplomatic incident", as it is being termed, came during a three-way meeting last week between Mr Levy, Palestinian peace negotiator Mr Nabil Sha'ath, and the EU's indefatigable Middle East peace envoy, Mr Miguel Moratinos. Mr Moratinos apparently tried to interest Mr Levy in a working paper he had prepared, containing various suggestions for bridging Israeli-Palestinian differences and thus facilitating the resumption of peace talks that have been deadlocked for four months.
To the dismay of Mr Moratinos, however, Mr Levy is said to have flatly rejected the working paper, without even examining it, and to have brushed the EU envoy aside with words to the effect of "this isn't the time for a European initiative."
According to an Israeli TV news report of the incident, Mr Moratinos received a second rejection from the US Middle East envoy, Mr Dennis Ross, who is said to have told him that his involvement in peace efforts, far from helping, was actually harming US and Egyptian moves to restart the talks. Mr Moratinos, who has proved impressively energetic in trying to restore momentum to Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts, and has also spent recent months shuttling back and forth between Jerusalem and Damascus in a so far unsuccessful effort to get Israel and Syria talking again, could not be reached for comment last night.
Israel's most respected newspaper, Ha'aretz, ran as its top story last Thursday a detailed account of the EU's growing impatience with Israeli government policy on the peace process, and claimed that Europe was seriously considering a demand from the Palestinian Authority President, Yasser Arafat, that it impose economic sanctions on Israel. The report suggested that, ultimately, the EU would probably hold back from so dramatic a move, but that it could well delay implementation of various trade accords, and "encourage" individual European firms to "reconsider" their business dealings with Israel.
Israeli officials were quoted in the article as dismissing the threat of the EU cutting back trade, since, they noted, Europe enjoys a healthy balance of trade surplus with Israel. The EU had no interest in changing that relationship, one Israeli official was reported as saying, "unless it wants to shoot itself in the foot".
EU concern over the prospects for peace can only have been heightened with news of Jerusalem city council approval for a new, albeit small, Jewish housing project at Ras al-Amud, in the heart of Arab East Jerusalem. Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, has pledged to Mr Arafat that he will block the project, but the American millionaire behind it, Mr Irving Moscowitz, insisted in radio interviews yesterday that he had every right to build, and would not confirm reports that he had privately agreed to postpone the start of construction work for the foreseeable future.
(David Horovitz is managing editor of the Jerusalem Report
A third of West Bank settlers believe the peace process will fail and the Israeli army will reoccupy Palestinian self-rule areas, an Israeli poll showed yesterday. "There is much greater support for the belief that the [1993] Oslo peace agreement will fail," the director of the centre which conducted the poll said.