Middle East News
EU's Solana condemns "unacceptable" Palestinian deaths
Dec 27, 2008, 17:00 GMT
Brussels - The European Union's top foreign-policy official on Saturday condemned as 'unacceptable' the death of Palestinian civilians in Israeli air-strikes and called for an end to violence.
'The current Israeli strikes are inflicting an unacceptable toll on Palestinian civilians and will only worsen the humanitarian crisis as well as complicate the search for a peaceful solution,' EU High Representative Javier Solana said in a statement.
'I call for an immediate cessation of military actions on both sides. The EU has repeatedly condemned rocket attacks against Israel,' the statement said.
Solana's comment came hours after the French government, which holds the EU's rotating presidency until the end of the year, condemned a series of rocket attacks on Israel launched from the Gaza Strip as an 'unjustifiable provocation' and the Israeli response as 'disproportionate.'
And it followed a call from EU Foreign-Affairs Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner for both sides to 'exercise the utmost restraint, and to stop the escalation of violence which endangers the civilian population (and) to return immediately to the ceasefire.'
The EU sees Israel as one of its most important foreign partners, but is the largest donor of aid to the Palestinian territories, giving it a keen interest in seeing stability in the region.
Recently, the bloc has highlighted Israel's closure of the key crossings into and out of Gaza as exacerbating the already difficult situation in the strip.
'There is no military solution to the situation in Gaza ... Passages in and out of Gaza should be reopened to allow humanitarian and regular commercial flows,' Solana's statement said.
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Older Talkback
page: 1
Funny how Solana seems to condemn Israeli actions whenever possible and rarely Palestinian. And we only see soft spoken statements about the Palestinian provocations. They may say their intention is to get a peace deal, but it seems there's some bias there. Maybe Israel should beware any peace negotiations backed by the EU. Maybe all the nations need to watch out for the EU supra-government that's shaping up fast. They are well on their way to taking your sovereignty away. In the name of global protectionism they will begin dictating rule of law in your country too soon enough. But deep down you know it's not global protectionism that's important. It's control of the global international community they want, and ultimately right down to rules of global citizenship at an individual level. Israel may have taken a hard stance against the Palestinian provocations in this case. But they will never stop until they turn the tides against Israel. If there's no indication the Palestinians will stop the provocations, then Israel is left with no choice but to defend itself and it's citizens.
Peace will come. Solana is the Antichrist. He will bring peace but then destruction.
Yes, I agree that Solana is the antichrist and we should be very careful who we put our trust in. Jesus Christ is coming back SOON and we are to be ready. Praise the Lord!!
page: 1
whimpsDec 27th, 2008 - 22:41:23
EU pussy's, what, should we just let the keep on getting more and more weapons from Iran, let the breeders invade the western world enmass due to appeasing tratiorous govts..??
The EU are a bunch of cowards, can you not see the writing on the wall.??
Your countries are been over run by the crap (muslimes) of the world and are been destroyed from within.
Look at the absolute side show that the UK has turned into, what a disgrace.
Act now on this invading scum of the planet or there will be no western world as we know it for much longer.
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