EU rejects Netanyahu’s calls for following US move over Jerusalem

  • News
  • December 12, 2017
EU rejects Netanyahu’s calls for following US move over Jerusalem

Foreign ministers of European Union (EU) states have strongly rejected calls by Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu, for them to follow Donald Trump’s move and recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
This opposition from across the European spectrum came as Netanyahu made the first official trip to the EU by a sitting Israeli premier in 22 years.
Even the Czech Republic, one of Israel’s closest allies, said the US president’s decision was bad for peace efforts. France said Jerusalem’s status could be agreed only in a final deal between Israelis and Palestinians.
The Czech foreign minister, Lubomir Zaoralek, said on Monday that Trump’s announcement last week “can’t help us.”
“I am convinced that is it impossible to ease tension with a unilateral solution,” Zaoralek said, according to Reuters, as he and other European foreign ministers gathered for breakfast with Netanyahu. “We are talking about an Israeli state, but at the same time a Palestinian state.”
After a breakfast meeting between Netanyahu and EU foreign ministers in Brussels, Sweden’s foreign minister Margot Wallstrom said no European at the closed-door meeting had voiced support for Trump’s decision, and no country was likely to follow the US in announcing plans to move its embassy.
“I have a hard time seeing that any other country would do that and I don’t think any other EU country will do it,” Wallstrom told reporters.
Although some EU states are seemingly unclear about their attitudes toward Israel, but the EU’s official position is that it supports what Federica Mogherini, its foreign policy chief, called the “international consensus” from which Trump departed last week when he announced a reversal of decades of American diplomacy.
Mogherini voiced this position during a news conference held on Monday at the European Council headquarters in Brussels in the presence of Netanyahu.

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