The Palestinian envoy to the European Union said today she believed the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty would strengthen the EU's role in brokering a peace deal in the Middle East.
Leila Shahid said Palestinians were keen to see the EU become "more operational" in foreign affairs to keep the fledgling peace process alive and ensure that progress can be made towards of an independent Palestinian state.
Ms Shahid told The Irish Timesthat while the EU was the biggest donor of financial aid to the Palestinian Territories, it has traditonally struggled to present a unified foreign policy position because of the mechanisms of the Nice Treaty.
While she did not wish to interfere in the domestic politics of a member state, she nevertheless expressed her hope that the referendum in Ireland would be passed as it would "consolidate the political role of the EU in foreign affairs" and see the EU assert its political place in the quartet of Middle East peace brokers, along with the US, Russia and the United Nations.
Labour MEP Proinsias De Rossa, who is president of the European Parliament's delegation to the Palestine Legislative Council, welcomed Ms Shahid's comments, saying they reflected the EU's support for the people of the Palestinian territories.
Mr De Rossa said Palestinians were "clearly keen" for reforms of the EU's common foreign and security policy to be put in place, as it would make the union more politically effective in brokering a peace deal
However, the Irish Friends of Palestine group, which has been campaigning for a No vote, claimed the EU has been facilitating illegal Israeli actions against Palestinians, and had refused to impose sanctions on the Jewish state because of the "very effective" Israeli lobby active in Britain, Germany and France.
Spokesman Sean Clinton questioned Ms Shahid's credentials to speak for the Palestinians, claiming she was part of the Fatah movement which were "hand in glove with the EU in this charade of a peace process".
In a separate development, the Irish Friends of Palestine Against Lisbon (IFPAL) said today it had received a request from the Minister for Defence, Willie O’Dea, to remove one of its posters on the Ennis road in Limerick.
The poster refers to Israel’s offensive in Gaza earlier this year and accuses the European Union of complicity in what the group describes as “these genocidal actions”
Mr O’Dea is understood to have told the group that the sign had received a lot of complaints from local people and tourists.
Mr Clinton said: “If the message that these signs display were inaccurate or untruthful, there would indeed be grounds for complaint and criticism.
“However, none of their critics has yet produced a fact or statistic that disproves them, so we in IFPAL can only conclude that their message is too close to the bone for supporters of the rogue state to stomach.”
In a statement issued today, the IFPAL condemned the move by Mr O’Dea’s office to have the poster removed , claiming it was an attempt “to interfere with the democratic process at the behest of Zionist sympathisers who wish to shelter Israel from public opinion”.
“At a time when the UN Goldstone Commission has accused Israel of grave war-crimes in the conduct of its onslaught against Gaza, such behaviour is particularly reprehensible and tends to prove IFPAL’s case that EU foreign policy is fully complicit with Israel’s crimes. This is the basis for our call for a No vote in Friday’s referendum,” the group said.