Europe should play a more active role in seeking a resolution to theconflict in the Middle East, argues Lara Marlowe
So the foreign ministers of the European Union "reserve the right" to demand reparations from Israel for the €17.29 million worth of Palestinian infrastructure destroyed by the Israeli armed forces. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon must be laughing.
In the unlikely event the Europeans ever demand payment, the sum is an infinitesimal percentage of the $3 billion which Washington gives Israel yearly.
European taxpayers should not laugh, though, for it was €9.3 million of their money that paid for the flattened Gaza International Airport, €3.3 million from their purses that built the dynamited Voice of Palestine radio station in Ramallah. Millions more were poured into wrecked police stations, a hotel, a forensic laboratory, Gaza port, a reforestation project, a rubbish dump, sewers, schools, an irrigation system . . .
The United States, which never hesitates to ask Europe to finance its disasters, has admitted that Israeli attacks on Palestinian infrastructure may be "counter-productive", but America "understands Israel's need to ensure its security". If negotiations ever resume, you can be certain that Europe will be asked to bankroll the peace.
Just last week, the Israeli speaker of the Knesset, Avraham Burg, called for an immediate "international Marshall plan" for Palestine.
Mr Burg travelled to Paris with the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Ahmed Korei, better known as Abu Ala. At a time of assassinations, suicide bombings and reprisals, their appeal for "the end of all violence and a resumption of peace negotiations" provided the tiniest glimmer of hope. French authorities are frustrated by the EU's lack of volition in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In private, they criticise Britain and Germany for blocking all EU initiatives. So Paris made much of the Israeli-Palestinian visit, publicising Burg and Korei's meetings with the French President, Prime Minister, Foreign Minister and the Speaker of the National Assembly.
While the Europeans dithered, some small but courageous steps were taken in Paris. Mr Korei invited Mr Burg to address the Palestinian Council in Ramallah, and Mr Burg accepted.
Mr Sharon - the man whom the Israeli Kahan Commission report held "personally responsible" for the massacre of hundreds of Palestinian refugees at Sabra and Chatila - forbade Mr Burg from going to Ramallah.
There wasn't a peep out of Washington. Mr Sharon has already prevented Israel's figurehead President, Moshe Katsav, from attempting a similar goodwill trip to the West Bank.
Mr Burg insists he'll defy Mr Sharon and go to Ramallah, and the Speaker of the French National Assembly, Raymond Forni, says he'll go with him. Mr Forni has asked the speakers of all 15 legislatures in the EU to join them, on the assumption that it will be more difficult for Mr Sharon to intimidate or turn around elected European representatives than a dovish Labour Speaker of the Knesset on his own.
But if the Burg-Korei initiative showed that gestures are still possible, it also showed the limitations of peace-making at a time when the US has given Mr Sharon carte blanche and there is no counterbalance to America's unconditional support for Israel.
According to the the French news agency, Agence France Presse, this week, 1,168 people have been killed since the second Intifada erupted with Mr Sharon's foray onto the Haram as-Sharif 17 months ago. Nearly 10,000 others have been wounded. Of the 1,168 killed, 886 - three-quarters - were Palestinian. To dismiss this fact as "engaging in comparative arithmetic" is a cop-out.
Every death is a tragedy, but the casualty figure reflects Israel's massive military superiority over the Palestinians, and the fact that despite the real and terrible fear Israelis live with daily, most of the violence is perpetrated by Israeli forces inside the occupied territories.
Mr Burg and Mr Korei were guests of honour at a colloquium at the National Assembly entitled "For a European Initiative in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict".
But the Israeli politician reacted angrily to the most concrete proposal that came out of the session, for a European protection force in the occupied territories.
"The Middle East is not a legal and political analysis done in Paris," Mr Burg said. "In the Middle East, there are walking human bombs in the streets, killing people. Those who don't pay attention to reality will have walking human bombs one day in Paris." Israel's rejection of what it considers European meddling was a constant theme with Mr Burg.
"The Middle East does not need the righteous, subjective preaching of old Europe," he said.
Palestinian officials have long begged for a protection force. A draft UN resolution that would have sent international observers to the occupied territories was vetoed by the US in December, so the retired French General Jean Cot, who made the proposal, knew it didn't have a chance.
Gen Cot headed the UN protection force in the former Yugoslavia in the mid 1990s.
The last Yugoslav war, NATO's two-month bombardment of Serbia in 1999, provides a blatant example of double standards.
The Serbs created hundreds of thousands of Kosovar Albanian refugees before the NATO bombardment started. There are 3.7 million Palestinian refugees. The Serbs - like the Israelis - dynamited their enemies' houses.
But there were far fewer casualties in Kosovo in the run-up to the 1999 war than there have been in the Israeli-occupied territories since September 2000.
What, one wonders, would it take to move the Europeans?
Europe now has the military means and chain of command to deploy men in the Israeli-occupied territories, Gen Cot said. "But does it have the political will? It would mean a major break with Europe's habit of following the US. We don't accept the way the US is running this crisis. We don't accept hearing Yassir Arafat called 'Bin Laden' and hearing his 'inertia' condemned while his authority is further destroyed daily."
Gen Cot proposed a large brigade of at least 7,000 European blue helmets - 5,000 in the West Bank and 2,000 in Gaza - to be deployed along the June 1967 border.
His suggestion coincides with increasing calls from within Israel for "separation" of Israelis and Palestinians.
Israel is already beginning to build electric fences along the 1967 border, Gen Cot noted. An international force could help stop Palestinian extremists slipping into Israel to commit suicide bombings - and Israeli tank columns continuing their lethal incursions into the occupied territories.
Mr Burg's angry outburst was also directed at Prof Majid Benchikh, who teaches international law in France.
Mr Benchikh said that under the UN Charter and the Fourth Geneva Convention, Palestinians have the right to armed resistance to Israel's 35-year-old military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
If this is true, then European condemnation - and Yasser Arafat's firing of an acolyte - for the 50 tonnes of arms seized on the Karine B is hypocritical. Do the Palestinians have the right to fight occupation or not?
Prof Benchikh fudged the question of attacks on settlers - whom most Palestinians consider occupation forces and hence legitimate targets. Nor did he address the suicide bombings that kill and maim civilians inside Israel.
In these horrible attacks, Mr Sharon has found a permanent excuse for strengthening the occupation.
It ought to be possible to condemn Palestinian suicide bombings and force Israel to leave the West Bank and Gaza, as required by international law. If the Europeans are not willing to protect the Palestinians from their occupiers, they could at least help define clear rules of engagement.
• Lara Marlowe is Paris Correspondent of The Irish Times