The head of the European Council and the European Commission, Charles Michel and Ursula von der Leyen will meet with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on April 6, Reuters reported referring to an official representative of the EU.
He did not give details of the visit of Charles Michel and Ursula von der Leyen. But the visit is part of a renewed relationship, endorsed by EU leaders last week after Turkey took steps to reassure the EU over the situation in the eastern Mediterranean.
Turkey, an EU candidate country, last held an official summit with the two EU heads in March 2020, when Erdogan met with Michel and von der Leyen in Ankara. Despite Turkey’s decision to withdraw from a convention that protects women from violence and deterioration in human rights, the EU says it is ready to work with Ankara to expand trade.
Both sides are also seeking to negotiate new EU support for billions of euros for Syrian refugees in Turkey.
In a joint article published on Tuesday across leading news platforms, the signatories said that the coronavirus pandemic had been a “stark and painful reminder that nobody is safe until everyone is safe” and that “there will be other pandemics and other major health emergencies”.
“The question is not if, but when. Together, we must be better prepared to predict, prevent, detect, assess and effectively respond to pandemics in a highly coordinated fashion”, they said.
The question is not if, but when. Together, we must be better prepared to predict, prevent, detect, assess and effectively respond to pandemics in a highly coordinated fashion
The main goal of the treaty, which would be rooted in the WHO Constitution, would be to foster a comprehensive approach to strengthen national, regional and global capacities and resilience to future pandemics, the leaders added.
Standing with WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the leaders signing on so far, represent Albania, Chile, Costa Rica, the European Council, Fiji, France, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the Republic of Korea, Romania, Rwanda, Senegal, Serbia, South Africa, Spain, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, the United Kingdom, and Ukraine.
“At a time when COVID-19 has exploited our weaknesses and divisions, we must seize this opportunity and come together as a global community for peaceful cooperation that extends beyond this crisis”, the leaders said.
‘We must act boldly’: Dr. Tedros
Speaking at a press conference later in the day, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros highlighted that the idea behind the proposal for the treaty is to “systematically tackle the gaps exposed by COVID-19”.
The pandemic has brought out the best and worst in humanity, he added, recalling “acts of incredible courage” from health workers and communities around the world, on a daily basis, but also inequalities in societies, geopolitical fault lines and frayed trust in public institutions.
“The impacts on our societies, economies and health, especially for the poor and the most vulnerable, are too significant”, Dr. Tedros said, stressing that “we cannot do things the way we have done them before and expect a different result…we must act boldly”.
We cannot do things the way we have done them before and expect a different result … we must act boldly – Dr. Tedros
He went on to note that the treaty would strengthen the implementation of the International Health Regulations (IHR) as well as provide a framework for international cooperation and solidarity.
It would help build resilience to pandemics and other global health emergencies, with robust national and global preparedness systems; ensure timely and equitable access to pandemic countermeasures, including vaccines; support sustainable funding and capacity for prevention, detection, and responses to outbreaks; and promote mutual trust.
Member States’ decision
Dr. Tedros also said that ultimately, the Member States would decide.
“How such a treaty is developed and what it looks like, and whether it is ratified, is a matter for our Member States – the nations of the world”, he added.
“We must leave a legacy for our children: a safer world for all.”
Intellia Therapeutics’ Investigational CRISPR Treatment NTLA-2001 Receives European Union Orphan Drug Designation for ATTR Amyloidosis – EU Politics Today – EIN Presswire
<figure class="inline photoswipe_slides full" readability="5"> <a href="https://media.winnipegfreepress.com/images/EM103-326_2021_210405.jpg" data-index="1" data-size="650x433" rel="nofollow"> </a>
<figcaption readability="10">Tourists and locals have drinks at a bar in downtown Madrid, Spain, Friday, March 26, 2021. With its policy of open bars and restaurants, Madrid has built itself a reputation of something like Europe's last reduct for fun. That's driving some business to locals and giving politicians and the media much to debate about ahead of a regional election. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)</p></figcaption> </figure>
<p>MADRID - In Madrid, the real party starts at 11 p.m. after the bars close — and curfew kicks in. </p>
<p>That's when young, polyglot groups of revelers from Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and, most noticeably, France, join their Spanish contemporaries in Old Madrid's narrow streets to seek illicit fun. Most are in their early 20s, eager to party in the Spanish capital like they haven't been able to do for months at home under strict lockdowns. </p>
<p>With its policy of open bars and restaurants — indoors and outdoors — and by keeping museums and theatres running even when outbreaks have strained hospitals, Madrid has built a reputation as an oasis of fun in Europe’s desert of restrictions. </p>
<p>Other Spanish regions have a stricter approach to entertainment. Even sunny coastal resorts offer a limited range of options for the few visitors that started to arrive, coinciding with Easter week, amid a set of contradictory European travel rules. </p>
<p>“It’s a real privilege for me to go into bars because in France you can’t. Here I can go to restaurants, share time with friends outside of home, discover the city,” Romy Karel said. The 20-year-old Berliner flew to Madrid last Thursday from Bordeaux, the southern French city where she's studying social sciences. </p>
<p>"I can’t remember when was the last time I did this,” she said. </p>
<p>The visitors are bringing some vital business to locals and giving politicians much to debate about before a polarized regional election. Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the regional president of Madrid who is running for reelection, is trying to attract votes beyond her conservative supporters by campaigning under the slogan of “freedom." </p>
<p>Outside the capital, efforts to jumpstart tourism are drawing mixed results. In part, that's due to a patchwork of rules at regional, national and even European levels that curb domestic nonessential travel in many countries while leaving a loophole for those seeking a Spanish holiday. </p>
<p>Although Germany has banned all domestic tourism and discouraged travel abroad, the government allows trips to Spain's Balearic Islands, which have a low infection rate. Bookings of flights and hotels followed even though many were disappointed to find on arrival that bars and restaurants were shut at night. </p> <figure class="inline photoswipe_slides full" readability="5"> <a href="https://media.winnipegfreepress.com/images/EM111-327_2021_095123.jpg" data-index="2" data-size="650x433" rel="nofollow"> </a>
<figcaption readability="10"><p>Two women meet at Palma de Mallorca Airport on the Spanish Balearic Island of Mallorca, Spain, Saturday, March 27, 2021. Efforts in Spain to restart tourism activity is drawing a mixed picture due to a patchwork of national, regional and European rules on travel that is confusing both tourists and their hosts. (AP Photo/Francisco Ubilla)</p></figcaption> </figure>
<p>“In Germany, we have so many rules that coming here feels like freedom," said Marius Hoffman, 18, shortly after he landed in the archipelago's capital, Palma de Mallorca, this past weekend. </p>
<p>David Stock, another German traveller who visited Granada's famed Alhambra complex this week, acknowledged the paradox of his government's rules combined with Spain's embracing of tourists. </p>
<p>“There are strange rules everywhere these days,” Stock said. </p>
<p>In France, hard-hit regions are curtailing free movement to a 10-kilometre (roughly six-mile) radius from home. Together with the nationwide nighttime curfew and the total closure of bars and restaurants since last October, it's proving too much for many, who look south for excitement. </p>
<p>France now accounts for one-fifth of all incoming flights to Madrid, while cellphone roaming data analysis has shown an increasing uptick of French mobiles in the Spanish capital since January — peaking around weekends. </p>
<p>When curfew begins, many of the fun-seekers head for underground gatherings advertised via messaging groups. Others recruit fellow party animals on their way back to their rented Airbnbs. Last weekend, police said they broke up more than 350 illegal parties, with some of the attendees hiding in closets or other “implausible” places. </p>
<p>Spain recently said it would extend a negative coronavirus test requirement in effect for arrivals by sea or air to include those entering from France by land. </p>
<p>Still, foreigners like Hoffman or Karel can fly direct from Munich or Bordeaux to beach resorts or cultural wonders in Spain, while Spaniards can’t travel across regions in the country to their second homes or visit relatives. </p>
<p>This rankles with many, such as Nuria López, a 45-year-old pastry shop owner in the Spanish capital. </p>
<p>“It's unfair,” López said. “But it does help the economy in Madrid and we need that.” </p>
<p>Like her, many see the need to boost an industry that in 2019 accounted for 12.5% of Spain's gross domestic product and employed nearly 13% of its workforce. The near-total halt of international travel, paired with last year's first uncompromising lockdown, meant that the economy shrank 10.8% in 2020, the biggest drop since the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. </p>
<p>So even as hospitals filled once again after Christmas, politicians resisted the pressure to follow other European countries in ordering full stay-at-home orders, closing schools or most businesses. </p>
<p>To this day, Spain has avoided imposing quarantines for visitors from other EU member countries — unlike neighbouring Portugal, which on Monday tightened the mandatory isolation requirement for most incoming travellers. </p>
<p>Pablo Díaz, a tourism expert with the Barcelona-based UOC university, said pandemic fatigue, especially among younger generations, and a lack of a common European policy have meant that "tourism has found ways to establish direct corridors in an organic way where the supply and demand meet." </p>
<p>The uptick in bookings ahead of Easter week, he said, “has been like a breath of fresh air for tourism." </p>
<p>“But that doesn't mean that the industry is going to come out of ICU any time soon,” he added. </p>
<hr/><p>Bernat Armangue and Iain Sullivan in Madrid, Francisco Ubilla in Palma de Mallorca, Sergio Rodrigo in Granada, Thomas Adamson in Paris, and Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin, contributed to this report. </p>
<hr/><p>Follow AP’s pandemic coverage at: </p>
<p>https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic </p>
<p>https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine </p>
<p>https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak
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“Throughout this pandemic, it has been up to local governments and communities to move quickly and decisively to stop the spread of COVID-19 and ensure an effective response,” Ms. Sharif added.
Despite these pressures, many local governments and community leaders responded quickly and effectively to prevent the spread of the pandemic and mitigate its effects.
The UN-Habitat report recommends actions for a sustainable recovery based on evidence from more than 1,700 cities.
Life and death inequalities
It found that patterns of inequality, due to a lack of access to basic services, poverty and overcrowded living conditions, have been key destabilising factors in increasing the scale and impact of COVID-19.
Eduardo Moreno, Head of Knowledge and Innovation at UN-Habitat, said that due to the pandemic, an estimated “120 million people in the world will be pushed into poverty and living standards will reduce by 23 per cent”.
“The conclusion is that income matters”, he added.
According to the text, urban leaders and planners must rethink how people move through and in cities, using lessons learned from the last year of COVID-19.
This includes an increased focus at the local level on planning neighbourhoods and communities that are multi-functional and inclusive.
UN News/Vibhu Mishra
A view of the city of Bangkok, the capital of Thailand.
Planning, affordability
The report explores how well-planned cities combining residential and commercial with public spaces, along with affordable housing, can improve public health, the local economy and the environment.
It calls for cities to be at the forefront of moves towards a Social Contract between governments, the public, civil society and private sector.
The new social contract should “explore the role of the state and cities to finance universal basic income, universal health insurance, universal housing”, said Sharif.
For one real-world example, Claudia Lopez Hernandez, Mayor of Bogota, explained how in the Colombian capital, their new social contract prioritises women and children.
It is a “social contract that includes women, that provides them with time, with time to take care of themselves, with time to educate themselves, and with time and education skills to come back to the labour market”.
“To have self-sustainable women is to have self-sustainable societies”, Hernandez explained.
New priorities
The Report outlines how a new normal can emerge in cities “where health, housing and security are prioritised for the most vulnerable, not only out of social necessity, but also from a profound commitment to human rights for all.”
This requires governments to focus on policies to protect land rights, improve access to water, sanitation, public transport, electricity, health and education facilities and ensure inclusive digital connectivity.
The Report recommends strengthening access to municipal finance to enable city leaders to build a new urban economy that reduces disaster risk as well as addressing climate change by developing nature-based solutions and investing in sustainable infrastructure to enable low carbon transport.
The Cities and Pandemics Report makes it clear that the way urban environments recover from the pandemic, will have a major impact on the global effort to achieve a sustainable future for all – in line with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
How relevant is religion in the third millennium?
For centuries, millions of Catholics have been previously guided in every aspect of their lives by their popes.
However currently, religion has ceased to be the driving force for nominal Catholics, as well as its role diminished in Protestant lives.
Rather, social media has been a greater influence in everyday life for the majority.
Today, religion largely doesn't play a great part in belief or opinion, because it is believed to relate insignificantly to modern life.
With fluctuating changes in social norms, values and morals post-twentieth century, is the role of the Pope obsolete?
Can Pope Francis and Catholicism continue to dictate what Catholics should believe in their personal lives today?
Has the Church moved with the times?
When the Pope determines same-sex marriage cannot be blessed by God, yet embraces the communities which it represents, is this ambivalence hypocritical?
Margaret Court and Israel Folau are vilified vehemently for the same view, yet there is no public condemnation of the Pope's stance.
ANON. Panic buying hits Rocky – did everybody survive last time? Didn’t hear of anybody not having any food or water. These panic-buying clowns would not have survived WWI and WWII. Thanks for your service and common sense in hard times in Australian history.
ANON. Shut the state down, who gives a stuff about Easter? Health, health, health and more. Think about our elderly who might not see another Christmas, Easter or New Year you bunch of selfish inbreeds. You would not know what it was like to go to war and leave your country to fight for it for what you have today.
LPMC. I’ve said it before, Qld Health is a disgraceful mess and with no plans to fix it. Nursing staff say they have no direction due to no workforce plan. Why do Ministers with no idea control massive departments? Qld taxpayers deserve better, not what Palaszczuk is dishing up to us.
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March 28, 2021 (KHARTOUM) – The leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) praised the courage of the head of the Sovereign Council after the signing of the Declaration of Principles (DoP) separating religion and state.
The DoP was signed by Adel Fattah al-Burhan and Abdel Aziz al-Hilu Juba, Sunday, in a ceremony attended by President Salva Kiir and WFP Executive Director David Beasley who become a de facto facilitator for negotiations to end the conflict in the Blue Nile and South Kordofan states.
The framework agreement provides that the state should be neutral and impartial in religious matters. Also, it provides that the SPLA combatants would be absorbed in the Sudanese army by the end of the transitional period after “resolution of the relationship between religion and state by the constitution”.
The deal satisfies the aspiration of the SPLM-N for a secular state and responds to al-Burhan’s demand to integrate the SPLA fighters during the transition not after as it had been proposed by the armed group.
In a speech at the signing ceremony, the SPLM-N leader said that the Declaration of Principles paves the way for broader negotiations to translate the agreed principles into provisions that ensure achieving change in the country and implementing democratic reforms in Sudan.
He expressed hope that the negotiators would avoid “competing and duelling in useless matters” and keep the national interests in mind.
Al-Hilu’s cautious optimism refers to the difficult relationship between the SPLM-N al-Hilu negotiating team and the head of the government negotiating delegation Chems al-Din Kabbashi who is also from the Nuba Mountains.
In return, al-Hilu praised al-Burhan’s “bold step” that led to the signing of this Declaration, which is described as an “important breakthrough” that “may lead to the achievement of lasting peace and just unity”.
For his part, al-Burhan stressed that the signing of the Declaration of Principles represents the beginning of the efforts of the transitional government to reach real change in Sudan to “create the state of citizenship, freedom and justice, and translates slogans raised by the revolutionaries”.
He thanked South Sudan for the great effort it has been making to achieve peace in his country.
The head of the Sovereign Council stressed that the transitional government is determined to “achieve the change that everyone will accept and the Sudanese people have made sacrifices for” including the armed groups.
He pledged to establish a Sudan of justice and equality for the Sudanese people and future generations, where there is no distinction between North or South, religion or ethnicity, as he said.
Last November, Kabbashi objected to Hamdok’s agreement with al-Hilu on the separation of religion and state on 3 September 2020.
Also, the Sudanese military rejected the recommendation of a workshop held in Juba on the relationship between state and religion in November 2020. He said that the workshop did not discuss other issues, in reference to the military arrangements.
Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok welcomed the signing of the declaration as a courageous gesture and evidence of the solid will of all Sudanese – civilians and military – to complete the second phase of peace in Sudan, following the Juba Agreement and the Addis Ababa Agreement.”
The SPLM-N led by Malik Agar also welcomed the signing of the declaration of principle adding it will consolidate peace in Sudan.
“Juba Declaration between General Burhan and Comrade Abdel-Aziz is a step forward towards peace. It strengthens the Juba Peace Agreement and it is fully welcome from our side,” said Yasir Arman in a tweet posted after the signing of the framework agreement.
American teenagers and their parents have a lot in common when it comes to religion, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center—“though not quite as much as the parents may think.”
The report analyzes the responses of more than 1,800 U.S. teens and one of their parents, each of whom took separate online questionnaires exploring such topics as their concepts of God, ways of praying, religious beliefs and doubts, and notions of morality.
“Pew Research Center gets so many questions nowadays from people wanting to know what Generation Z thinks,” says Elizabeth Sciupac, a senior researcher on the Center’s domestic religion team and co-author of the report, referring to the moniker for those born after 1996. “This survey doesn’t begin to answer all of that, but it does start to flesh out a picture of what they look like religiously.”
Among the findings:
Parents are more likely than teens to say that religion is very important in their lives—and to overestimate rather than underestimate how important religion is to their teen. For instance, far fewer teens (24%) than parents (43%) say that religion is very important in their lives.
Teenagers attend religious services about as often as their parents, but 38% say they attend mainly because mom or dad want them to. Thirty-five percent say they attend because they want to.
Most U.S. teens ages 13-17 share the religious affiliation of one or both parents.
Eight in 10 parents who identify as evangelical Protestants have a teen who identifies as such. But little more than half the teenage children of mainline Protestants identify the same way their parents do, and about one-quarter of mainline Protestant parents have a teen who is religiously unaffiliated.
The report marked some new territory for the Center’s religion research, says Sciupac, “in part because the religion team doesn’t do a lot with teens.” Asking respondents to speculate on how another respondent might answer certain questions was also a novel approach for the team, she says.
“Some of what I loved most about this survey were the answers we got to open-ended questions, where people had a chance to write in their own responses,” Sciupac says. “We see teens grappling with big questions, like `Why does God let people die?’ And they have these really well-thought-out answers.”
“It was wonderful how much came up in our conversation,” says Lilace Guignard of Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, after she and son Gabe, 16, took a short version of the original Pew questionnaire modified for this article. “He’s much more thoughtful about all this than I knew to expect.”
Like the original survey, the short version queried Lilace and Gabe on such topics as their frequency of prayer, belief in God, and denominational identity. It, too, asked what each thought the other’s answer to certain questions might be.
Gabe answered that religion is “very important” to him and supposed his mom would say the same. To his surprise, she ranked it “fairly important” because, she explained, religious identities “have a tendency to divide people.”
Both Lilace and Gabe identify as Presbyterian, and they attended church services together nearly every week before the pandemic. But neither knew until they took the questionnaire that the other prays once a day, or that they both favor conversational, informal prayer over formal recitation. “I said I pray at night,” says Lilace, a part-time teacher of creative writing, outdoor recreation leadership, and women’s studies at Mansfield University of Pennsylvania. “And he said, `Yeah, me, too.’”
As they talked further they discovered each feels a special devotion to God—whom Lilace conceives as God the Creator, and Gabe as God the Father. “The talk he and I had focused on how we experienced God firsthand through the natural world, and how this was the foundation for our absolute certainty about God,” says Lilace. “It was a wonderful thing to discover we shared this.”
The survey’s findings “give us an up-to-date view of how teens are not only experiencing religion for themselves but also with their families,” says Sciupac, as well as “how much they feel obligated, how much they feel engaged, what is shaping their religious lives. I think that can bring a lot to the table for a variety of groups who are interested in these things.”
The report’s data analysis mined a larger religious attitudes survey that the Center conducted in 2019. “This report tried to capture how teenagers and one parent interact when it comes to religion,” says Sciupac, and “how they align and don’t align.”
The analysis examined the results of a self-administered web survey conducted in March and April 2019 among 1,811 adolescents ages 13-17 and one parent per child, in both English and Spanish. Released in September 2020, the report’s full title is “U.S. Teens Take After Their Parents Religiously, Attend Services Together and Enjoy Family Rituals.”
About two-thirds of adolescents taking the survey say they identify with a religion, with about one-quarter identifying as Catholic and 21% as evangelical Christian. The evangelical teens say religion is “very important” in their lives nearly twice as often as those of other Christian groups and are also far likelier to believe in God “with absolute certainty,” attend religious services weekly, and pray daily.
If the major Christian traditions are counted separately, however, those who identify as “nones” (that is, agnostic, atheist, or “nothing in particular”) make up the single largest religious category among teens, at 32%.
The survey’s sample size was not large enough to allow for analysis of the views of some religious groups, including Black Protestant denominations, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Orthodox Christian churches, and non-Christian faiths.
Among the parents who took the survey, 57% were mothers. Although mothers are typically involved when one parent is more engaged in the religious upbringing of children, the survey found that teens identified about equally with their father’s religious beliefs (50%) and their mother’s (47%).
Among the report’s other findings:
About 70% of teens and parents accurately estimated how important religion was to the other. But when they estimated incorrectly, parents overestimated its importance 69% of the time, while teens underestimated its importance for mom or dad 55% of the time.
Less religious parents are likely to have teens who are also less religious. Eighty percent of parents who say that religion is “not too important” or “not at all important” in their lives have a teen who feels the same way.
Half of teens say they hold all the same religious beliefs as their parents, but among those who say their beliefs differ, a third say the parent is unaware.
The survey’s findings “give us an upto- date view of how teens are not only experiencing religion for themselves but also with their families.”
What do these findings say about the future of religion in America, whose young adult population has grown markedly less religious in recent decades? Sciupac and her colleagues urge a cautious reading.
“While it is possible that these adolescents will ultimately be equally or more religious than current young adults,” they write in the report, “this survey neither supports nor contradicts such a hypothesis.
In fact, previous research has suggested that much of the movement away from religion among adults occurs after they come of age, move out of their childhood homes, or otherwise gain a measure of independence from their parents.”
What’s more, the researchers note, “religion varies across the life course, often declining in late adolescence and early adulthood, and then increasing as people age, form new relationships, start their own families, and mature into later adulthood.”
David O’Reilly was the longtime religion reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer.
MORE than one in four small UK exporters have halted sales to the European Union, and the “vast majority” of firms doing business with EU customers and suppliers have been hit with shipment delays or loss of goods, a key survey has revealed.
The survey of more than 1,400 small firms, published today by the Federation of Small Businesses, shows 23% of small exporters have temporarily halted sales to EU customers and a further four per cent have already decided to stop selling into the bloc permanently after new trading rules took affect at the start of this year.
More than one in ten (11%) of exporters are considering halting exports to the EU permanently. The same proportion have established, or are considering establishing, a presence within an EU country to ease their exporting processes. And 9% are thinking about securing, or are already using, warehousing space in the EU or Northern Ireland for the same purpose.
The survey also shows “those selling into the bloc suffering more as a result of new paperwork than importers”.
While small UK importers have also been hit by the new trading arrangements and paperwork, fewer than one in five (17%) have temporarily suspended purchases from the EU (17%).
The majority (70%) of importers and/or exporters have suffered shipment delays relating to their trade with the EU in recent weeks. Nearly one in three (32%) have lost goods in transit, and 34% have had goods held indefinitely at EU border crossings. Of those that have experienced delays, 36% have suffered hold-ups that lasted more than two weeks.
The FSB report, published nearly three months after the end of the Brexit transition period, also reveals that more than half of small UK exporters have sought seek expert help to manage new administration.
The small business organisation noted that the first full quarter of post-transition trading comes to a close on Wednesday, adding: “The day also marks two years since the original Brexit date that firms were told to prepare for in 2019.”
Photo Credit: Har Hebron Spokesperson’s Office
Illegal Arab school built with European Union funding at archaeological site in southern Hebron Hills, March 19 2018
The “Ad Kan” nonprofit organization, together with Israel’s Hebrew-language Channel 13 television news team has announced another expose, this one describing the silent war being waged by the European Union against the State of Israel using the Palestinian Authority to illegally occupy the land of Judea and Samaria in Area C.
“We want to tell you something that you do not know,” the Ad Kan narrator says in the report. “We are at war.
“In the past year we have infiltrated agents in the Palestinian Authority under false identities and established contacts with EU officials — and what we have discovered is nothing short of shocking.
“Behind the scenes and behind the back of the State of Israel, what we discovered was the European Union’s “Century Project.”
According to the report, the EU has allocated some three billion euros for the construction of a Palestinian state and the construction of its new capital city in Jerusalem. (ed: italics added)
In conversations with senior PA officials and original documents that were unveiled to the architects of the move on the Palestinian Authority and EU sides, the investigators found that the EU is pushing with all its might — all the while knowing this was being done against international law and the Oslo Accords — to build a Palestinian state, all of it behind the back of the State of Israel.
“We have uncovered a well-oiled mechanism in which the European Union secretly provides money, people and planning and legal knowledge to prepare a plan that will isolate Israeli communities in Area C in Judea and Samaria and in Jerusalem, and interrupt a settlement sequence to impose a de facto terrorist state in the heart of Israel,” the Ad Kan representative warns.
“During the activity we discovered that we are already in the middle of the process; about 100 such plans are gaining ground in the field, unhindered, while completely ignoring the law and the Oslo Accords.
“Never before has there been such blatant interference in the internal affairs of any country in the world by the European Union as there has been in ours, whether in funding anti-Israel organizations or in drawing the borders of the Jewish state.”
In the above video (Hebrew language only) the narrator goes on to explain — and to show the documents that prove the claim! — that sources who spoke with the investigative team said the Palestinian Authority government is expected to receive a sum of $952,460 for new Arab construction in the Old City of Jerusalem. The sources also said $778 million is to be invested in the development of areas around Hebron and Bethlehem, and another half a billion dollars ($500 million) earmarked for construction and development in the PA capital city of Ramallah, located in Binyamin section of Samaria.
The sums are to be invested in building that will be carried out in accordance with the EU’s Century Plan.
“This failure (by Israel to end EU interference – ed.) cannot continue, and we will do everything to stop it,” Gilad Ach, CEO of Ad Kan, vowed in the report.
