The Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, has praised the position of the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gadaffi, who refused to attend the Paris summit to declare the Union for the Mediterranean.
Hamas said that this is an advanced position that understands the core message of this gathering as an attempt to incorporate Israel into the fabric of the region and from the window after all attempts to let it go through the doors had failed.
Muhammad Nazzal, member of the Political Bureau of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, said on Monday: ‘We value any position against normalisation with Israel.
‘We consider the position of the Libyan leader, Muammar Gadaffi, to be a correct position because he refused to get involved in the Union for the Mediterranean, based on the refusal to let Israel enter the region.’
Nazzal said: ‘The summit of the Union for the Mediterranean is an attempt by the Israelis to enter the region through the window, having failed to enter through the door.
‘We know that since the signing of the Camp David accords, the attempts of the Israelis to be a part of the fabric of the region have not yielded field results, and the Israeli body continued to be rejected.
‘Therefore, what is happening today is an attempt under the heading of the Union for the Mediterranean to let Israel into the region.
‘This agrees with a French desire to have influence in the region, taking advantage of the decline in the US role and the extreme hatred of US policies in the region.
‘The Union for the Mediterranean has two goals: one related to the interests of France and its ambition to return to the region, and an Israeli one to enter the region through the window.’
On another level, Nazzal strongly criticised the statements by some Arab writers and media people that say that Hamas is nothing but a part of Syrian policy in the region and that its acceptance of calm with the Israelis is an expression of a Syrian position.
He said: ‘These opinions reflect lack of knowledge or understanding of the Palestinian political arena.
‘Hamas does not take orders or directions from anyone. The calm is a Palestinian national interest.
‘The fact that the Hamas leadership is in Damascus does not mean that Hamas is in anybody’s pocket.
‘It is regrettable that this applies to some writers. They try to apply their reality to others. Those people are used to being in the pocket of regional and international forces.’
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner on Monday said there had been a last-minute ‘deadlock’ between the Israelis and the Palestinians during the previous day’s summit on the Union for the Mediterranean (UFM) in Paris.
Kouchner hailed the summit, which officially launched the UFM in the presence of leaders from 43 countries, and which ended with the adoption of a final declaration of about 10 pages, as a ‘magnificent event’.
Kouchner said the meeting was held ‘with peace in the background’.
He nevertheless regretted ‘a final moment of deadlock between the Israelis and the Palestinians, as a result of which the text has yet to be corrected a bit’.
‘At the last moment we failed over a word, with perhaps half an hour wanting,’ the minister went on.
This word, he explained, concerns ‘the nation-state, the national and democratic state’.
‘National implies a difficulty concerning the return of refugees and the Jewish-or-not-Jewish state, a Palestinian state. In short, it didn’t happen.’
The Palestinian delegation confirmed the disagreement. ‘The Israelis were insistent about including the phrase “state for the Jewish people”, something to which we are categorically opposed,’ Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki said.
‘It was out of the question for us to accept it,’ he added. ‘We would have wanted the final declaration to be clearer on this point,’ added a Palestinian official, who was speaking on condition of anonymity.
An Israeli official claimed that his delegation was ‘in agreement with everything adopted in the declaration, because it was done by consensus’.
The political passage in the final declaration of the UFM summit, of which President Nicolas Sarkozy had said that it had been adopted unanimously, makes no direct reference to this concept and, regarding this issue, refers to the conclusions of the Lisbon meeting in November 2007, and to the Annapolis process.
In the political declaration published after the Euro-Mediterranean conference of Lisbon on 5 and 6 November 2007, it can be read that ‘bilateral talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (…) should pave the way to (…) two national states’.
On 27 November in Annapolis, on the other hand, mention is only made of the goal of ‘two states, Israel and Palestine’.
In response to a question concerning the controversy sparked by the presence of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Paris, Kouchner said: ‘With whom are we making peace?
‘If we are trying to start a process of calming down the situation, it’s in fact because people are fighting.’
‘The Israelis have congratulated us. They were very pleased to see Bashar al-Assad in Paris. Yesterday he said that in six months’ time, in two years’ time, we could reach the goal of peace between Syria and Israel,’ he added.
More generally, the French foreign minister said that the summit ‘will only be a success if, afterwards, we give ourselves the means to provide assistance, the means to make proposals, and then if the main players adopt the spirit to carry on.
‘We have proposed projects for the Mediterranean, now we need to take action,’ he added.
• Libya’s General People’s Committee for Foreign Liaison and International Cooperation on Monday released the following statement on the European law regarding the deportation of immigrants:
‘The General People’s Committee for Foreign Liaison and International Cooperation has read the law on the deportation of immigrants which was passed by the European Parliament (on 18 June) and was deeply astonished to note that the European Parliament passed this law without any consultation or coordination with the party concerned by this matter, namely the African Union.
‘This constitutes a breach of the commitment taken by Africa and the European Union by virtue of the Rabat Declaration and the Tripoli Declaration on immigration and development, in addition to the statement issued by the Lisbon summit in which the two sides agreed that immigration posed a common challenge for both Africa and Europe and that no effective solution would be found to this challenge without an integral and comprehensive cooperation.
‘The General People’s Committee for Foreign Liaison and International Cooperation deplores such a conduct and stresses that the era when one side used to take unilateral decisions on a fundamental issue which concerned another side is now in the past.
‘Furthermore, Africa will not accept any law which is based on repression and which treats African immigrants as criminals, including children and the elderly.
‘The General People’s Committee for Foreign Liaison and International Cooperation asks the European Union and its bodies to reconsider this move without any delay and to consult and coordinate efforts with Africa in all aspects relating to immigration in accordance with the agreed mechanisms.
‘Should the European side persist in its stance, the Great Jamahiriyah will coordinate with the other countries of the African Union to study this law and its consequences with a view to taking a unified African stand on this move.’
