On the Ashton heap of current events

Soccer Dad
14 June '10

Lady Ashton wrote yesterday about Ending Gaza's dangerous isolation:

Two questions arise. How can we help to improve the daily lives of the people of Gaza? How can we help to enhance the security of the people of Israel? Those two questions must be answered together, for any attempt to answer them separately is doomed to fail.

That is why I am seeking to re-open the crossings into Gaza, permanently, for humanitarian aid, commercial goods and civilians to and from Gaza. This is what the United Nations Security Council and the European Union have demanded; it is also what Israel agreed with the Palestinian Authority in 2005. On my trip to Gaza I bought some fabulous handicrafts made by remarkable women who have overcome daunting conditions; I want an end to the ban that prevents their world-class rugs and scarves and ornaments from being sold and enjoyed around the world.

Lady Ashton's main concern is that the world should be able to enjoy genuine Persian carpets made in Gaza.

Elder of Ziyon commenting on an article written about Gaza notes that the article ignores (or doesn't emphasize) what's really going on:

Yes, there is an embargo - one that the Quartet agreed to. Yes, there are challenges for Gaza families to get things done.

(Read full post)

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EU justice for refugees

Petra Marquardt-Bigman
The Warped Mirror/JPost
21 March '10

There's no reason to blame yourself if you missed the media coverage of last week's Middle East visit by the EU's new foreign policy chief, Baroness Ashton of Upholland, England. To be sure, the media dutifully reported on the visit, but it didn't exactly dominate the headlines. Many people may therefore be unaware that Lady Ashton followed President Obama's example and tried to win Muslim "hearts and minds" with a speech in Cairo.

Since there is already an excellent analysis of this speech by Emanuele Ottolenghi at Commentary's Contentions blog, I would like to focus here just on one of the issues raised by Ashton, namely her declaration that "we need a just solution of the refugee issue."

The context of this remark indicates that Lady Ashton only had Palestinian refugees in mind when she raised this point. As usual, there was no mention of the inconvenient fact that the number of Jewish refugees systematically driven from their ancient communities and dispossessed by Arab states is actually higher than the number of Palestinians who fled their homes during the war waged by the Arabs to prevent or undo the establishment of Israel.

We can obviously only speculate as to what Lady Ashton and the EU would consider a "just solution of the refugee issue", but we know by now that in the negotiations between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, the Palestinians demanded that 150,000 refugees should be allowed to "return" to Israel as part of a peace agreement. Interestingly enough, this number is only stated in the English translation of a relevant document, authored by Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, while the original Arabic version does not specify any number.

The long-standing Arab demand that, different from all the world's other refugees, the Palestinians should be allowed hereditary refugee status and should be able to claim a "right of return" for several generations has often been refuted.

A recent ruling by the European Court of Human Rights has once again illustrated that there is little basis for Palestinian claims of a "right of return". The court rejected the "right of return" claimed by Greek refugees from Northern Cyprus who had fled to the southern half of the island during the Turkish occupation in the 1970s. A majority of the court's judges accepted the Turkish argument that developments in the following decades had created a new reality that should not be undone, and that the refugees therefore could only claim financial compensation for their lost property.

(Read full article)
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