MPPM calls on EP to reject ACAA with Israel

MPPM calls for European Parliament's rejection of trade agreement with Israel which would represent connivance of the European Union with the policy of expropriations, evictions and colonization carried out by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territories.

It is known that the European Parliament will consider in the coming days, the establishment of an ACAA protocol (Agreement on Conformity Assessment and Acceptance of Industrial Products) with the State of Israel which, if approved, is an instrument for strengthening economic relations between the EU and that country.

It is also known that the State of Israel persists in the occupation and colonization of Palestinian territories in open defiance of international law. Under this policy, Israel has, indeed, intensified settlement construction and expansion, while it has multiplied the measures and actions to cause the expulsion of Palestinian populations from their lands. Such a policy has sparked a widespread condemnation in the international community, translated, both in condemnation of such initiatives - for contrary to basic human rights - and in the active boycott of actions and initiatives that could somehow represent an effective recognition of the Israeli occupation of their territories. The widely shared political consensus within the European institutions is very clear about the illegality of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and in considering the settlement policy carried out by Israel as a major obstacle to establishing a just and lasting peace in the Middle East. It was indeed as a consequence of this principle that, in 2010, the European Parliament decided to suspend the process of assessing this ACAA protocol, following the Israeli assault, in international waters, against the Freedom Flotilla.

In this sense, the eventual adoption of the ACAA protocol with Israel would violate that consensus and put the European Union in a position of complicity with the repeated and continuous violation, by Israel, of the spirit and letter of the UN Charter. All available data, coming from United Nations agencies and European Union itself, confirm that Israel has intensified and accelerated the policy of expropriation and expulsion of the Palestinians and the occupation and colonization of their lands, and multiplied, in general, violations of human rights of the population of the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. At the same time, continues the illegal and criminal blockade on the Gaza population that the international community generally strongly disapproves. It is indeed particularly shocking that, in the preparation of this ACAA protocol with Israel, it has already been negotiated a separate annex for the pharmaceutical industry - encouraging the growth of economic relations in this area - when, by the siege imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip, hospitals and other health services are deprived of most basic resources in order to attend to the most basic needs of that so devastated population.

In this regard, the Portuguese Movement for the Rights of the Palestinian People and the Peace in the Middle East calls on Parliament to reject the approval of the ACAA protocol with Israel. The MPPM - a non-governmental organization recognized by the UN Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People - calls, in particular,on the Portuguese members of the European Parliament to, in obedience to the principles laid down in Article 7 of the Portuguese Constitution, speak out against that measure and to encourage the adoption by the European Union of a consistent, committed and coherent policy that favors the fulfillment of the national rights of the Palestinian people.