By outlawing Hamas, the EU sidelines Europe Khatoun Haidar

Opinion, September 2003, www.aljazeerah.info

By outlawing Hamas, the EU sidelines Europe

Khatoun Haidar

The Daily Star, 9/30/03

The European Union’s council of ambassadors met in Brussels on Sept. 11 and agreed on a foreign policy decision of supposedly significant consequence for peace in the Middle East. The EU decided to place the Palestinian resistance group Hamas on its blacklist of "terrorist" organizations. Last year the EU outlawed the Ezzeddine al-Qassam brigades, the military wing of Hamas, but held back from condemning the political wing in the hope it could play a positive role in peace efforts.

This time it was Italy, using its position as current president of the EU, which pushed the EU nations to fall in line with the United States. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw found a strong ally in Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini during the informal foreign ministers’ meeting held on Sept. 6 at the Italian lake resort of Riva del Garda. The issue of Hamas was raised. France, Belgium and Greece had previously argued strongly that marginalizing the political wing of Hamas would do more harm than good to the fragile Israeli-Palestinian peace process. However, they shifted their position and sentence was passed.

On the same day the US State Department rushed out a statement praising the EU decision “to designate the Hamas leadership and its institutions (as a terrorist group)” considering it “an important step in halting the financing of terrorist activities.” Such a statement disregarded that legal modifications allowing for the freezing of the bank accounts of people or groups whose names appear on European terrorist lists were passed during the 2002 Spanish EU presidency. Whether any account or person will be affected by the latest decision remains to be seen, given that because of French reservations, the EU decision named Hamas as a whole, not individual leaders or charities suspected of fundraising for the movement.

One wonders about the real impact and relevance of this step. The EU is not a homogeneous body, and considering that all decisions have to be voted unanimously, member countries must walk down the road of compromise until they reach a common middle ground. The position of Britain and its allies within the EU echoed US policies. These were best expressed by Straw in early September, when he confirmed his intention to press EU members to blacklist Hamas’ political wing, which among other things provides civil services in the Palestinian territories.

Spain and Italy are allied with the US on Iraq, but take a different approach to the Palestinian question. In a nuanced way, Frattini confirmed this position when he told reporters, after meeting US Secretary of State Colin Powell in Washington: “If Hamas provides an alternative source of financing this will weaken the Palestinian Authority and it goes contrary to our interests … We have to support and help the Palestinian Authority and (former) Prime Minister Abbas.”

The sudden shift in the position of France and its allies was more difficult to read. Some people quoted unidentified EU sources as saying representatives of the former Abbas government made the blacklisting request to pressure Hamas into accepting a ceasefire with Israel. Sadly for the Palestinians, who more than ever must stress national unity to survive a dangerous period in their history, this was not a far-fetched scenario, given recent dissent within the ranks of the PLO and Fatah.

Whatever the real reasons, the EU decision was followed within hours of its announcement by a wave of Israeli attacks and assassination attempts against the Hamas leadership. The Arab world perceived the EU decision as one offering Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a license to kill Hamas activists. This made much more difficult the task of those in the Arab world who argue against the popular belief that what is happening today is a new Western Crusade against the Arabs. The position of France and Germany relative to the war in Iraq, together with overwhelming European popular rejection of US policy there and in Palestine, has made it possible for Arab moderates to reject the extremist vision of a world ruled by the laws of an inevitable clash of civilizations.

Independent of the Arab perception, blacklisting Hamas was a badly timed and empty decision. Hamas does not fit the definition of an international terrorist organization, given that it operates within its regional boundaries. Suicide operations against civilian targets are wrong, but it is also true that the Israeli policy of assassination by indiscriminate air strikes against crowded urban areas is also wrong and unjustifiable. When this becomes the official policy of a country, it deserves to be condemned. The EU decision seemed unbalanced. It did not mention Israel’s blatant disregard of Palestinian rights and international law.

By taking this one-sided decision the EU blundered, threatening to undermine its most effective actual and potential role encouraging reconciliation in and fair arbitration of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Khatoun Haidar is a Lebanese journalist. She wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).