The UN Committee scheduled to hold a virulently anti-Israel meeting on European Parliament premises in Brussels August 30-31, 2007 is no stranger to controversy. For the last thirty years, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP) has hosted events around the world, all of which have a common theme. Israel is the problem. Palestinian "resistance" and return is the solution – UN-eze for promoting terrorism and the end of a Jewish state. This is the same UN Committee notorious for prominently displaying a Mideast map at UN headquarters missing the state of Israel. The practice was discontinued in 2006 after being photographed and disseminated by EYEontheUN...

"Although there is no official statement that Israel must be pushed down to the sea there, the choice of subjects and the attitude towards the problems shows that it will be a biased, conflict generating conference. Actually we can call it anti-Israeli," he said.

'Israelis can count on Poles'...

...According to the Bnei Brith organization, which sent delegates to attend the conference from its European Affairs Office, British Member of Parliament Clare Short said during her speech that Israel was not interested in a two-state solution, and blasted the EU for "allowing" Israel to build "an apartheid wall".

"The boycott worked for South Africa, it is time to do it again," Short was quoted as saying.

The security fence was also attacked by the European Parliament's vice president, Edward McMillan-Scott, who maintained that it would not bring peace to Israel. McMillan-Scott added that the European Parliament was committed to "a two state solution with safe borders," according to the Bnei Brith report of the conference.

Addressing the conference on behalf of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, Leila Shahid, Palestinian Representative to the EU, read out a statement in which Abbas expressed satisfaction that the conference was hosted by the European Parliament, and lamented the suffering of the Palestinian people.

Pierre Galand, European coordinator of the Committees and Associations for Palestine, claimed that the conference was taking place despite pressures to cancel it, and blamed the Fatah-Hamas conflict on "Israeli policy"...