“I believe that both want peace: the leaders but above all the two peoples want peace, because Israelis and Palestinians cannot go on like this”. Minister Franco Frattini thus summarised his meetings on Wednesday 9 December with Palestinian Premier Salam Fayyad and later with Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu

The meetings were held the day after an in-depth analysis during the General Affairs and External Relations Council of 7-8 December on the Middle East that ended in an appeal for a resumption of the peace talks.

Minister Frattini was praised by the Israelis for having contributed to “balancing” the text proposed by the Swedish duty EU presidency on East Jerusalem and approved by the foreign ministers in a version that Minister Frattini himself defined as a “balanced compromise”. The document was deemed positive also by Fayyad, who saw the EU’s endorsement of the legitimacy of the Palestinian’s right to have a State within the 1967 borders as well as Europe’s expression of contrariness to all Israeli building activities in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Minister Frattini assured Fayyad of the support of Europe and the international community for the creation of a Palestinian State “as soon as possible”; and he urged Netanyahu to “stand up to” pressure from settlers protesting the government’s decision to put a 10-month freeze on settlements in the West Bank. “A positive first step”, the minister commented, “now what is needed, as underscored in the EU foreign ministers’ document, is the resumption of talks; there is a climate of electoral uncertainty in the Territories while the extremists continue to reject offers of national reconciliation. The Minister’s appeal went to President Abu Mazen: go back to the negotiating table, “Italy, Europe and the United States support it”.

Concrete steps were made on the bilateral plane. In Ramallah the minister announced an additional Italian contribution of 10 million euro to the NPA budget (on top of the 220 million contributed over the past decade) and expressed the hope that Italy will soon be able to make a “system mission” to illustrate the opportunities to businesses for investing in the Territories.

Relations with Israel will be further strengthened at the summit convened for 1 to 3 February next in Jerusalem, with delegations led by the premiers of both countries and large delegations of ministers. The minister also spoke with Netanyahu about the Iranian nuclear dossier. “They await urgent decisions from us on what initiatives to undertake”, he commented.