The events in Gaza are also giving food for thought and concern to German commentators. Inge Günther writing in the FRANKFURTER RUNDSCHAU (13/6) comments as follows: “A ceasefire is no longer enough to solve the problem. The causes are many. They have to do with the fact that 1.5 million people cannot be cooped up in a depressed and overpopulated strip and abandoned to poverty without this turning Gaza into a breeding ground of violence. In Gaza a no-future generation has grown up that relies only on its kalashnikovs. Moreover, the pragmatic wing of Hamas has failed politically to achieve anything. The international boycott has involuntarily reinforced its radical forces. There is an acute danger not only that Hamas will gain control of the whole of Gaza, but also that the ideas of al Qaida will gain ground amid the chaos”.And Thorsten Schmitz writing in the SÜDDETSCHE ZEITUNG observes: “The civil war makes one doubt whether the Palestinians are capable of running a State of their own if they cannot even agree on a modus vivendi… They have elected Hamas into government, i.e. the organization that wants to destroy Israel and that supplies with arms, and not with books and bread, the people in the Gaza Strip. With their internal struggles, the Palestinians not only demonstrate their incapacity to have their own State: they also leave the international community lost for words. The silence of the West is based on uncertainty and the consciousness that the hundreds of millions of euros in aid have so far failed to lead the Palestinians to abandon their weapons and exercise instead a virtue that cannot be bought with money: speaking”. “A civil war is now raging through the whole Middle East”, while “the invocations and appeals for reason seem to have led to nothing”, declares Giorgio Ferrari in an editorial in the Italian Catholic daily AVVENIRE (14/06). “The emblem of this sleep of reason is above all the fratricidal strife that for weeks has been causing bloodshed in the Gaza Strip”, whose “real victim is Palestinian credibility. Who will be able in future to trust Hamas? Europe, which has hitherto propped up the Palestinian finances with a cash generosity equal only to her own impotence? Or the UNO, to which people are looking with the timid hope that it may send – perhaps in partnership with the EU – yet another international peacekeeping force to prevent the Palestinians from massacring each other? Perhaps a whole new generation will be needed before the Palestinians will be able to present themselves at a negotiating table to lay the foundations of an independent and sovereign State with a new and especially a persuasive face. The faces of Abu Mazen and Hamas are certainly not that. There are those who are already mourning the loss of Arafat. A better gift, say many, could not have been made to Israel. But the worst – concludes Ferrari -, has probably still to come”.”The compromise reached by the G8 on the climate shows that when the Europeans play together they are able to persuade the USA to change its position” observes Jean-Cristophe Ploquin in a comment on international policy in the French daily LE MONDE (11/06 ). At the G8 “five European leaders, Merkel, Blair, Sarkozy, Prodi and Barroso, spoke with one voice, defending, each in his own way, the strategy approved in Brussels in March”. “The main merit must go to Angela Merkel, who with courtesy and firmness maintained the objective to the end” and so “in the end the USA preferred not to find itself isolated and sought a compromise formula”. “Will the unity shown by the Europeans at Heiligendamm – asks Ploquin – also be expressed on other questions? The next test will be the World Trade Organization negotiations, where the EU is defending a common position against the USA and Brazil, but where its internal divisions, especially in agriculture, frequently undermine its cohesion”. According to Ploquin, “the next European summit on 21 and 22 June, aimed at laying the foundations for a new institutional treaty, will also need as close agreement as possible”. “With France enjoying a new dynamic and Germany in command – concludes Plonquin – a new European success is possible”.Lech Walesa , founder of the Polish trades union Solidarnosc and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, has published on the internet the content of the files concerning him compiled by the Communist secret services (www.lwarchiwum.home.pl). The publication is accompanied by Walesa’s declaration: “I never sold myself. I never surrendered myself. I never permitted fear to win in me. I fought in the best possible way, acquiring experience without which I would never have been able to achieve victory in 1980”. Walesa declares that the documents accusing him of being a collaborator of the secret services “were prepared on the orders of the leaders of Communist Poland” and just for this reason “are technically sound”. He stresses that “this documentation, prepared at the time as a provocation and a means of blackmail, is still being touted round the world, and at times is considered to be true”. The former Polish President says, however, that the falsity of the documents “has been ascertained by the tribunal” and declares his readiness “to explain any detail that might appear unclear or puzzling”.
