BRUSSELS (EJP)---A UN-sponsored conference on the rights of the Palestinians, which opened Thursday at the European Parliament in Brussels despite protests and critics by Israel and MEPs, denounced the continuing Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and accused Israel of “apartheid.”

The two-day conference, entitled "International Conference of Civil Society in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace" is organized under the auspices of the United Nations "Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable rights of the Palestinian People."

Opening the gathering, which brings together non-government organizations, diplomats but also members of the European Parliament as well as Israelis and Palestinians, the committee’s chairman, Paul Badja from Senegal, declared: “Ending the occupation, establishing a Palestinian State on the basis of the pre-1967 borders, and enabling Palestine refugees to exercise their right of return are the very basic principles for negotations aimed at a lasting final status settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

He said that “the human rights of the civilian Palestinian population are routinely violated” and condemned the “sealing-off of the Gaza Strip and the humiliating system of checkpoints throughout the West Bank.”

While Pierre Galand, chairman of the European coordination committee of associations for Palestine, told EJP that the conference was not “an attack on Israel,” several speakers used harsh words against the Jewish state.

Clare Short, a British Labour MP, criticized the EU for allowing Israel to build what she named “an apartheid state” against the Palestinians.

She called for sanctions and a boycott against Israel "like we did with South Africa."

Speaking on behalf of the European Parliament, Edward McMillan-Scott, its vice-president, regretted that the Brussels conference had been labeled “anti-Israeli” and declared his support for a two-state solution of the conflict.

The British MEP criticized the Israeli security barrier, saying it would not bring peace to Israel.

Israel’s ambassador to the EU, Ran Curiel, but also several MEPs, had asked the European Parliament to cancel the conference in its premises because of its anti-Israel agenda.

Israel is viewing the UN committee as a legacy of the 1975 UN General Assembly resolution — revoked in 1991 — that equated Zionism with racism.

But the president of the European Parliament explained that the conference was not organized by the EU assembly which only provided space and facilities.

The decision by the leaders of the European Parliament’s political groups to allow the conference was criticized by several MEPs.

Charles Tannock, a Conservative pro-Israel MEP, stressed that his group, the largest in the parliament, was the sole to have opposed the meeting. “People assembled here are expressing extremely aggressive and hostile positions demonizing Israel," he told EJP.

No debate

“We didn’t even had a debate on this within the European Parliament and it was announced in the middle of the parliamentary summer recess,” he added.

By hosting this conference, EU taxpayers are supporting the costs of interpreters and other conference resources, he said.

Charles Tannock, British pro-Israel MEP (R):“People assembled here are expressing extremely aggressive and hostile positions demonizing Israel.”

Several years ago, the former European parliament president, Josep Borrell, had refused to host a similar gathering.

Tannock said he will raise the issue at next week’s plenary session of the European parliament.

A cross party consensus of MEPs from Poland have also come out against a conference.

"The conference agenda does not facilitate dialogue and consensus. On the contrary, it will lead to an escalation of already tense relations between the two nations," they said.

The Brussels-based Rabbinical Centre of Europe has denounced the presence at the conference of a group of members of Neturei Karta, an international organization of anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews, led by Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss. The group demonstrated near the European Parliament building to show support for the meeting and express sympathy with the Palestinians.

"’Rabbi’ Aharon Cohen has for a long time been ostracised by the vast majority of Jews for associating with and thus giving support and legitimacy to the enemies of Israel and the Jewish nation," the center, which coordinates the work of over 850 rabbis in the European Union and the CIS, said.

"Their involvement, coming from ones who style themselves ’rabbi’, in Tehran, at a conference called to promote the denial of the Holocaust with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in December 2006 is a stab in the heart of the Jewish Community at-large and of all decent law-abiding people."