Spain, France and Italy to spearhead new Middle East peace initiative

Chirac with Abbas in April (MaanImages)

November 16, 2006

Ma'an - Spain, France and Italy have proposed to send international forces to Gaza in a new initiative launched Thursday to bring peace to the Middle East, international media sources have reported.

At a France-Spain summit held in Girona in Spain, the Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero proposed a new initiative for an immediate cessation of violence on both the Palestinian and Israeli sides, a prisoner exchange, an international peacekeeping force in the Gaza Strip, and an international Middle East peace conference. According to the BBC, this initiative will be presented to the European Union summit in December, where it is hoped Germany and the UK will back the initiative.

The initiative will also stipulate the formation of a Palestinian national unity government that is able to receive international recognition.

According to the Spanish newspaper 'El Mundo', the French president, Jacques Chirac, who Spain was hosting at the summit, has accepted Zaptero's suggestion to jointly head the initiative, and promised to discuss it with the Italian prime minister Prodi immediately. He said that the EU had to act in the face of an "increasingly dramatic situation".

The website of the Israeli newspaper 'Haaretz' reported that Italy's Prime Minister Romano Prodi said details of the initiative would be announced in the coming days.

Meanwhile, Ynet, the website of the Israeli newspaper 'Yedioth Ahranoth', quoted AFP sources saying that the EU had backed sending international forces to the Gaza Strip "similar to the force stationed in south Lebanon".

On Wednesday, the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling for military observers to be sent to the Gaza Strip, and suggested deployment of a multi-national force, akin to the reinforced UNIFIL in southern Lebanon. The resolution also condemned both Israel's use of "disproportionate force" in military operations in Gaza, and Palestinian militants' "firing of rockets into Israeli territory." In addition, the resolution expressed "deep concern" over "the implications of the recent appointment of Avigdor Lieberman as the new Deputy Prime Minister of Israel".

For the full text of the European Parliament resolution, click here

For a summary procided by the European Parliamentary service, click here

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Israel rejects European draft for Mideast initiative