Wednesday, June 02, 2010

The Gaza flotilla: The Gaza crisis: what if the EU's first headache is Turkey? | The Economist

"The Gaza crisis: what if the EU's first headache is Turkey?

Jun 1st 2010, 22:06 by Charlemagne

WRITING from Brussels, I will not presume to say I know what really happened aboard the Gaza flotilla. Writing about Brussels, there is a familiar case to be made that the EU looks pretty irrelevant in a Middle East crisis, for all its fancy new foreign policy ambitions (Tony Barber takes a well-earned swipe at the Union for the Mediterranean in his FT blog today). The 27 member countries took four hours to come up with a common position yesterday, thanks to the usual divisions between those like the Czechs who wanted to give Israel the benefit of the doubt or at least wait for more information to emerge, and those like the Swedes, the Spanish or the Belgians who publicly called Israel's naval intervention a disproportionate use of force."

More:The Gaza flotilla: The Gaza crisis: what if the EU's first headache is Turkey? | The Economist