Itongadol.- EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton’s failure to quickly condemn the kidnappings of Naphtali Fraenkel, Gil-Ad Shaer and Eyal Yiftach has “not gone unnoticed,” diplomatic sources in Jerusalem said on Monday.
The officials said that while the US, Canada, Great Britain, Spain, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the International Committee of the Red Cross all condemned the kidnappings by Sunday, as of Monday afternoon there was no statement from Ashton or her office.
An official at the EU delegation in Tel Aviv told The Jerusalem Post that strong reaction was expected later on Monday.
Nevertheless, the length of time it took Brussels to issue a statement left Israeli officials wondering.
“Maybe they didn’t know about it,” one diplomatic official said caustically, contrasting the time it took the EU to condemn the kidnappings with the rapidity in which they regularly condemn announcements of Israeli construction beyond the Green Line. A source in the Prime Minister’s Office said that they, too, were taking note of who was condemning the kidnappings.
The EU has applauded the recent Hamas-Fatah unity moves, saying it was an important step toward intra-Palestinian reconciliation necessary for there to be a two-state solution.
Meanwhile, the message Israel’s representatives abroad were carrying to their interlocutors as a result of the kidnappings is that the Fatah-Hamas pact “opened the door” to wider Hamas activity in the West Bank, and “dozens of attempted kidnappings” have been prevented in the last year alone.
“The international community should unequivocally condemn the Hamas attack on innocent Israeli teenagers,” a foreign Ministry statement read.