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November 19, 2004/Kislev 6 5765, Vol. 57, No. 12
Europe pressing for Mideast role
PHILIP CARMEL
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
PARIS - When Miguel Moratinos told a French radio station this week that change is always good news for diplomacy, there was little doubt what he really meant.
Moratinos, Spain's foreign minister and the former senior European Union envoy to the Middle East, was implying that Yasser Arafat's demise provided just the opportunity the Europeans have been looking for.
Israel and the United States long ago refused to deal with Arafat because of his ties to terrorism, though European leaders by and large continued to regard him as indispensable to a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In European eyes, Arafat provided a convenient excuse for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's decision to pursue a unilateral plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, while disposing of the "road map" peace plan.
That plan, which envisages staged Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank and Gaza Strip leading to the creation of a Palestinian state, was sponsored by the European Union, the United Nations, United States and Russia.
The road map's first stage requires the Palestinians to dismantle terrorist groups, something they refused to do.
With Arafat's death, Euro-pean diplomats no longer see the unilateral nature of Sharon's Gaza withdrawal as justifiable, and believe Israel should be persuaded to nego-tiate the withdrawal with a new Palestinian leadership.
Central to this are elections in the Palestinian territories, last held nine years ago.
Moreover, with hopes rising that the endemic corruption of Arafat's rule will not survive him, the E.U.'s Dutch presi-dency last week suggested that Europeans could contribute in other ways as well.
"The E.U. wants to support the Palestinian Authority in four areas: security, institu-tional reform, elections and economic recovery," Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot told a meeting of the E.U. Council in Brussels.
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