Egypt lauds Europe's stance on ME crisis
Egypt-Palestine, Politics, 5/22/2002

The US does not understand how complicated the Palestinian cause is and the US negotiators made a blunder when they proposed a joint control over Jerusalem, said Egyptian Presidential Advisor, Osama Al-Baz.

In a joint symposium with John Sawers, the British ambassador to Egypt in Cairo late Tuesday, EL Baz said that in his capacity as an international lawyer, he did not find a so called "Joint Sovereignty" term because sovereignty implies no sharing.

In the symposium entitled "Arab views vis-a-vis West's over the ongoing events in Palestine", Baz said when he explained the issue to the US, the latter proposed the change of the term into "divided sovereignty" to grant Israel control of under the city's ground and the palestinians control above the ground.

He sarcastically questioned who has the sovereignty of the air. The European countries better understand the situation in the Arab states due to their longer presence in the region and their geographical location, said Baz.

"They, the Europeans, understand that security and peace are inseparable," he said.

But the European Union's stances should not be approached as one "package" because Britain adopts views that are different from those of France and Spain, as an example, he added.

The West is obviously biased to the Israeli sides for some reasons, said Baz.

First, it sees that Israel is a democratic state; second, it feels moral obligation to make for the crimes it perpetrated against the Jews during the Nazi era that is still haunting the Israelis.

He challenged any party to prove that Arabs have at any time carried out a systematic persecution of the Jews when they used to live among them.

Had not the Nazi crimes been committed against Jews during World War II, the Jewish State would have never come true, remarked Baz.

The problem now is with Israel's acceptance of Palestinans' existence without thinking over expelling them out of the land on which they were born, he said.

Some circles in Israel are now propagating the idea of transfer or relocating Palestinians into neighboring Arab States, said Baz.

The problem is also with the political trends in Israel where no right-wing or left-wing party adopts a definite and clear-cut policy and are only being steered by personal feelings and attitudes, Baz added.

He branded Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's will to skip Oslo accords and lick the agreements that had been built on them over the past decade as "sheer hallucinations."

Previous Stories:
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