Prodi: ‘EU may have fuelled bias against Israel’

By David Cronin

Date: 06/11/03

ROMANO Prodi, European Commission president, has acknowledged for the first time that EU policy towards Israel could be a factor in the findings of an opinion poll which showed that most Europeans regard the Jewish state as the biggest threat to world peace.

Writing exclusively for European Voice today (Page 9), the former Italian premier says the results of the poll, which was commissioned by the EU executive, left him in a state of "deep shock".

Israeli diplomats strongly denounced the Eurobarometer survey. From a sample of 7,500 people across the EU, 59% named Israel as the number one enemy of world peace, with the US, North Korea and Iran finishing joint second, ahead of Iraq. The Israeli EU embassy said the questions asked by the pollsters were biased against their country.

Prodi accepts the questions were formulated in an "ambiguous way", but says what is more important is that the EU ask itself why the poll produced such an "unbalanced judgement".

"Has the policy that we, the European Union and the individual member states, have followed towards Israel and more generally towards the Middle East over the years played any part in creating the imbalance? And to what extent might any vestiges of prejudice or real anti-Semitism have influenced our judgement?," he asks.

Prodi met leading Jewish organizations in New York on Tuesday (4 November) and also held talks with Cobi Benatoff, president of the European Jewish Congress yesterday, in the wake of the controversial poll. He wants a seminar with representatives of the Jewish community in Brussels in a bid to heal the rifts which it has opened up.

Speaking earlier, External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten said extremist rhetoric by Israeli politicians may have triggered ill-feeling among some of those quizzed.

Addressing the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee, Patten agreed the questions were "crude" but said it would be "preposterous" to go back to the 7,500 people and suggest they should change their minds.

In other developments, Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei called for the dismantling of a barrier being built by Israel in the West Bank during a meeting in Ramallah with the special EU envoy to the region. During talks with Marc Otte, Qorei emphasized the need to halt "construction [of the barrier] as a first step to its destruction".

Otte also criticized the route of the barrier: "If this causes the confiscation of Palestinian lands instead of contributing to Israel's security, the fence will create new frustrations and arouse opposition," he said.