http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=226157
Israel served as main course at EU dinner, official says
Worry in Israel that EU wants Quartet to make concession to PA in return for dropping UN bid; J'lem also frustrated that EU dinner on ME doesn't include Israeli representative.
According to the official, the concern was that the EU is pushing for the adoption of US President Barack Obamas formula of restarting negotiations using the pre-1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps as a baseline, but without pressing the Palestinians to elaborate on security arrangements of any future accord with Israel.
The official also said the Palestinians wouldnt be pressed to acknowledge Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people as a baseline for negotiations.
Many in Europe feel that something significant must be given to the Palestinians to get them to back down from their bid to get the UN General Assembly to recognize Palestinian statehood, the official said.
The Europeans appear willing to give the Palestinians what they have wanted as the baseline for talks, without even having assurances that this will be enough to keep them from taking the recognition issue to the UN, let alone without demanding any flexibility from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on the issue of refugees or Israel as a Jewish state, the official said.
Israels frustration with the EU, or at least with part of the EU, was highlighted this week when Luxembourgs Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, who was hosting the monthly meeting of EU foreign ministers, held an informal dinner on Sunday night on the Middle East with EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton to which he invited representatives from France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Portugal, Greece, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Russia, the US, Indonesia, the Arab League and the PA but not Israel.
Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, in a blog posting about the dinner, made it clear that Israel was a large part of the discussion.
Bildt wrote that it was evident that large parts of the Arab world have now given up virtually all hope of progress with the present Israeli government.
What aggravated Jerusalem was that at a dinner dealing with the Middle East, at which Israel, as one official said, was the main course, no Israeli representative was in attendance.
Meanwhile, White House Chief Middle East Adviser Dennis Ross said at the Presidents Conference in Jerusalem on Wednesday that the greatest risk at a time of sweeping change in the Middle East was to think that this was the time to sit still and do nothing.
Ross said that while he understood the impulse to stand pat and avoid taking risks, certain realities such as demographic trends that will present Israel with the dilemma of being either a Jewish or a democratic state could not be wished away.