The High Representative of the UE for the External Relations was today in the European Parliament to hear the members on the attacks of Israel to the Peace flotilla in international waters close to Gaza. With a neutral and passive approach, Catherine Aston affirmed that the current priority is the accomplishment of an independent and international investigation to inquire the facts of the attacks that killed nine activists in the past 31^st of May.

But the socialist member of the parliament De Keyser affirmed that the inquiry cannot have any value, as Israel erased all the vestiges of the massacre to present a new version three days later. De Keyser was the first one of several MEPs who had directly spoken to the people who were in the flotillas: “I speak to the populations of the flotillas who we’ve betrayed. I excuse myself, because I was asked for help and we did nothing. I have SOS messages in my telephone and I made nothing even if I was warned that Israel was preparing to attack. But now we won’t disappoint you! The EP demands justice! ”, she reaffirmed.

The MEPs of other political groups had also emphasized that this was not an isolated occurrence, but there was a clear relation between the expulsion of Arabs, the construction of the wall and a policy that humiliates the Palestinians.  The twenty and three days and twenty and three nights of attacks in Gaza, in January of last year, and that had killed 1400 people and had left an enormous track of destruction had been remembered by the Greek MEP Kyriacos Trianphillides.  

Conh-Bendit, from the Greens, evidenced that” we have to arrange an effective form to act and to finish with the physical blockade in Gaza, but also with the psychological blockade of the Europe”, that hinders to end the Israeli- Palestinian conflict. Answering to Catherine Ashton, on her declarations about the opening of Rafah’s border, the leader of the party of the Greens affirmed: “It is not just the border of Rafah that must be opened, but all the borders. And who must control it? Perhaps the Turks and the Germans”, proposed the MEP.

Confessing the shocking situation that she has seen in the last visit to Gaza, Catherine Ashton, admitted that the suffering of Gaza population does not bring more safety to Israel and that, in her next meeting, she will try to end with the list of one hundred of products that can enter in Gaza, to start a new list, much shorter, of products that cannot enter there. The High Representative reaffirmed that she is pledged in a dialogue with all the parts, namely with Turkey, Egypt, the Quartet, the UE and Israel. “I will work now to try to solve the situation of Gaza, in order to assure that the population that lives there can have the same benefits that we do! ”, she concluded.