Partners

This page contains information about lobby and advocacy initiatives of the Aprodev Middle East Working Group at a European level between 2002 and 2004. For all initiatives carried out by the Aprodev Agencies at a national level, information is available on the Agencies' websites.

Some Aprodev initiatives coordinated in Brussels are joint initiatives with several other development and human rights NGO networks. Indeed Aprodev believes that acting together, respecting each other's specificity, makes our efforts for a just peace and sustainable development far more effective.

16-17 February 2004: Aprodev agencies visit to the European Parliament to discuss progress made to solve problems arising from the current implementation of the EC-Israel Association Agreement.

Follow-up letter to External Relations Commissioner Mr. Chris Patten, 8 April 2004.

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25-27 November 2003: Aprodev agencies visit to the European Parliament to discuss progress made to solve problems arising from the current implementation of the EC-Israel Association Agreement

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15-17 September 2003:Aprodev agencies visit to the European Commission and the Council of the EU to discuss progress made to solve problems arising from the current implementation of the EC-Israel Association Agreement

Follow-up letters to the Commission and the Council of the EU, 16 October 2003:

Letter to Mr. Pim van Ballekom, Commission

Letter to Mr. Alan Seatter, Commission

Letter to Mr. Franz Eichinger, Council of the EU

Letter to Mr. Björn Larsson, Council of the EU

Letter to Mr. Javier Sancho Velasquez, Council of the EU

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14 May 2003: NGO joint letter to the Delegation for Relations with Israel of the European Parliament on the occasion of its first official visit to Israel (17-21 May 2003)

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10 March 2004: Aprodev letter to the Delegation for Relations with Israel of the European Parliament on the occasion of its second official visit to Israel

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25-28 NOVEMBER 2002: Institutional Discrimination against the Palestinian Citizens of Israel, visit to Brussels of Israeli NGOs – Jewish and Palestinian - working on the rights of the Palestinian minority in Israel

Summary: For this event, the focus moves from the external to the internal policies of Israel. Nevertheless, the issue of institutionalized discrimination against the Palestinian citizens of Israel is inseparable from that of Israel's systematic and material breaches of international law and international humanitarian law in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. Israel's internal and external unlawful policies have their own peculiarities, but they also have a fundamental common element: they are the expression of Israel's abusive exercise of coercive administrative power affecting the demographic and institutional structure of territories under its control. This visit was meant to raise EU awareness on this important aspect of Israel's policies, as well as to improve collaborating relations between Israeli NGOs working on human rights, European NGOs and the EU institutions.

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20 JUNE 2002: Hearing on "EU-Israel Bilateral Relations in the Framework of International and European Law. The case of the European Community-Israel Association Agreement", at the European Parliament

Summary: This Hearing focused on Israel's systematic and material breaches of international law, international humanitarian law and the law of treaties due to its policy vis-à-vis the Palestinian Occupied Territories, that is to say in Israel's foreign policy. Nevertheless, the issue of Israel's violations of human rights in its internal policy vis-à-vis its Palestinian citizens was also debated. In particular, Israel commits material breaches of its Association Agreement with the EU, violating the Agreement's provisions on human rights, democratic principles and trade, as well as on respect for the Charter of the United Nations.

The core question is whether the EU and its Member States can keep unmodified their relations with Israel without becoming involved in Israel's unlawful behavior and without failing to comply with their own obligations under international and European law; without seriously compromising their commitments under the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership and the resumption of the peace process.

The organizer NGOs concluded that Hearing with a common declaration addressed to the EU and its Member States' relevant institutions, recommending them to notify Israel the EU requirement that Israel cease the practices it carries out unlawfully, and in violation of essential elements of the EU-Israel Association Agreement. Should Israel fail to immediately undertake to comply with the EU and its Member States' requirements, it was suggested, the Council of the EU should take the appropriate unilateral measures consistent with cases of special urgency, including the suspension of the Association Agreement.

Since then, neither has Israel desisted from its unlawful practices, nor has the EU notified its requirements to Israel.

To know more about the EU-Israel Association Agreement, see the Aprodev popularizing document edited in March 2002 The European Community-Israel Association Agreement. An Introduction