The EU should assume a increased amount of responsibility  for establishing peace in the region based upon  fairness and justice to Palestinians and Israelis.  The EU can only fulfill this role when it at last starts to implement an active and coordinated Middle  East policy independent from the US.

With this election, the Palestinians have delivered  an important part of the constitutional and democratic  reforms in the Palestinian sector required by the  Middle East Quartet in the Road Map. Mahmud Abbas  has called the Palestinians to lay down their weapons,  thus reaching out a hand of peace to Israel, as  President Arafat did before him.

We, the Party of the European Left, express our  solidarity with the Palestinian people and with  those representatives of the Israel civil society,  who are seeking a fair, democratic and peaceful  solution for both peoples. Like the forces of peace  in Israel, the European Left calls for the Israeli  government to react at last to the peace efforts  of the Palestinians by trust-building measures.  It has to comply with the Palestinian demands for  the release of Palestinian prisoners and for the return of unlawfully confiscated Palestinian funds.

Israel must accept the founding of a sovereign,  democratic and viable Palestinian state of in the  West Bank and the Gaza Strip, territories that Israel has occupied since 1967, with East-Jerusalem  as its capital. There must be no further attempts  to occupy Palestinian land. The Israeli government  has to undertake the necessary steps to make the  promised withdrawal from the Gaza Strip irreversible,  and to start the withdrawal from the West Bank.  It must follow a clear course of abandoning all settlements outside the Jerusalem block and stopping  to build further settlements in the West Bank as  recommended by the Geneva Peace Initiative.
 Ensuring peace and democracy in the region means  first and foremost help to overcome Palestine’s  economic and social development problems as well  as Israel’s economic problems, both of which  have been caused or aggravated by the war situation.  The entire Middle East should be given a new social  and economic perspective. The Party of the European Left expects in this regard a much more active involvement  of the EU in the economic and social rebuilding of  the region. Such a European initiative could be implemented  as a revival of the Barcelona Process adjusted to  the real development needs of today. Without peace  in the Middle East there can be no peace for the  rest of the world.