Citing the decision of the EU to cut diplomatic ties with Hamas, France refused to grant Samir Abu Eisheh, a Hamas cabinet member, a visa to attend an event organized by the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris. France's foreign ministry explained that although the event is a private initiative, it received governmental support and subsidies and the French government is entitled to consider that a presence of a Hamas cabinet member has a diplomatic aspect which may contradict the EU decision about its diplomatic ties with Hamas. French foreign ministry spokesman although cited the conditions under which France may open up to Hamas:
Renouncing violence,
The recognition of Israel,
The recognition of previous peace agreements between Israel and the PA.
Those are vulgar tactics of intimidation targeting Hamas and the Palestinians. People in Palestine and the Arab world are saying that even though Arafat was corrupt he used to have the backing of the Palestinian people while Abbas is not only corrupted but has no legitimacy among the Palestinian people. He is perceived by Palestinians as the candidate of Israel, the US and the EU. Abbas, however, will be in France at the end of April and will be meeting France's president Jacques Chirac.
The choice of the Palestinian people is ignored by the west, so much for democratizing the middle east as a way of fighting terrorrism. What the US and the EU are doing is fighting democracy in the middle east as a way of fostering terrorrism !
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Since March 29th 2006
2 comments:
These scare tactics will have the opposite effect: how do we expect people to act reasonably when we, so unreasonably, do everything we can to antagonise them? School playground methods that won't work, unfortunately there is no head teacher to tell the bullies to back off.
Dear Gert,
You are saying what came to my mind many times: 'school playground methods'.
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