This week's postings at JfJfP.com

Slowly moving into the front line comes the EU, author of many resolutions deploring the illegal occuption and warning that Israel’s trade with Europe – Israel’s largest export market – will be restricted if serious negotiations for two states do not start. But officials seem satisfied with a finely honed form of words. Two analysts of the MEPP (Middle East Peace Process) recognise how frustrating this is and advise more courage and more pragmatism on both sides.
EU-Israel: unfilled promises, constant suspicion

As Federica Mogherini states that the EU is ready to take the leading role in a MEPP, Rami Khoury says why wait; there are effective actions the EU could take now.
EU ready to play major part in restarting peace process

And finally a resolution laying down a deadline for those talks to start is included in the resolution France is presenting to the UN Security Council. It might not seem as though Israel will have to pay a price if it ignores this resolution (if it passes; reports are that the USA has agreed not to veto it). Until now, all western countries and bodies have maintained a common position: the only solution to the Palestine question is ‘a negotiated two-state solution’. That common position may not be held if Israel ignores a UNSC resolution, meaning individual countries may recognise Palestine, and /or impose tougher restrictions on selected products.
French plan for UN Palestine resolution

Pope Francis is Argentinian and the Catholic Church is a world-wide institution though it’s centred on Rome. We don’t know how his prayer meeting with Presidents Peres and Abbas went at the Vatican. We do know that he has authorised the canonisation of two Palestinian Christian women and at the same time formally recognised Palestine as an independent state in a treaty drawn up for that purpose. These acts have probably done more than anything else to secure the place of Christians in Palestine, and secure the trust of Palestinians in the Pope as a peace-maker.
Praise the Pope for promoting Palestinians

The response of the Israeli government was hostile but measured. Not so the repellent and histrionic diatribe by Dror Eydar who works in the Prime Minister’s office. It was published in Israel HaYom, the free newspaper funded by billionaire Sheldon Adelson, now enjoying the largest circulation of any publication in Israel.
American-Jewish right high on rape and murder fantasies

Perhaps the Pope or the EU can do what no President from the USA can. President Obama has given several long interviews this week on his foreign policy. We post the one from the most widely read Arabic-language paper, Asharq Al-Awsat. He is more sympathetic about the lives of Palestinians than any British PM has been. But, like so many, it stops at words.
Obama: Palestinians deserve an end to the occupation

More popular than politics among young Palestinian men is football and for them Jibril Rajoub, head of the Palestinian Football Association, is now the most respected man amongst them. He heads the move to have the Israel Football Association suspended from FIFA for breaking its rules on racism and discrimination practices no other country gets away with. Support for this position has been growing.
Stop making an exception for Israel

One Jewish man who has persistently questioned the confusion between Israel and being Jewish is Robert Cohen. In our signatories’ blog this week he asserts his duty to be ethically Jewish without supporting a country whose M.O. is oppressing another people.
Jewish land trumps Jewish God

It was PM Netanyahu who quashed a plan by defence minister Bogie Ya’alon to enforce segregated bus lines in the West Bank (Palestinians separated from settlers and everybody else). He had the wit to know how this would damage Israel’s image in the USA.
Move to make practice of bus segregation official

And a hardy perennial: antisemitism in Europe. A new report from the Institute of Jewish Policy Research, Could it happen here, examines the evidence in the context of claims of rising antisemitism in Europe, including the UK. There is no evidence for this in the UK it concludes – though there have been more antisemitic incidents in Russia, Poland and Spain.  Taking a scholarly swipe at the “Campaign Against Anti-Semitism” which proclaims the threat against Jews in Britain at every opportunity, it advises us all to “steer away from knee-jerk reactions and ad hoc research enterprises”. It finds that about 7% of people in the UK (as in the US) maintain ‘negative attitudes’ towards Jews.

With no evidence base, it seems likely that the proportion who mantain negative attitudes towards Muslims in the same countries is higher.
Antisemitism fairly constant across time and countries

And more besides.