Veil Warns Israel Not to Legislate Annexation of the Golan Heights

— Simone Veil, the President of the European Parliament, warned Israel today not to go ahead with legislative initiatives calling for the annexation of the Golan Heights. An annexation law would cause great damage to Israel’s ties with Europe, the French Jewish stateswoman said before emplaning for home at the end of a four-day high-powered visit here. Veil added that she hoped the damage caused by the Jerusalem law would not be repeated.

At a press conference yesterday held by members of a delegation of the European Parliament who visited Israel along with Veil, delegation chairman John De Courcy Ling said the European Community’s “Venice Declaration” last June calling for the Palestine Liberation Organization to be “associated with” the peace efforts, was the result of “legitimate impatience on the part of Europe with the Camp David process.

Delegation member and longtime staunch supporter of Israeli Erik Blumenthal of West Germany, a member of the Christian Democratic Party, used the term “legitimate frustration” to describe the Europeans’ feeling toward the outgoing U.S. Administration.

Delegation members stressed that it was definitely not Europe’s intention to undermine or impede the Camp David process. De Courcy Ling also said that a large body of legal opinion in Europe believed that Greece should raise the level of its diplomatic ties with Israel to that of full ambassadorial level before joining the European Economic Community on Jan. 1.(See related story P.4.)

Earlier, former Foreign Minister Abba Eban had told the delegation that the EEC at Venice had throw-away its bargaining leverage over the PLO by issuing the document favoring the PLO’s association with the peace process only two weeks after the PLO in Damascus had reiterated its resolve to liquidate Israel. “You cannot change the Palestinians’ stand by pretending the change has already happened,” Eban said.