Last Saturday EU commissioner Catherine Ashton issued a statement about an IDF raid on two illegal Palestinian TV stations in Ramallah that took place on Wednesday February 28^th .

Ashton’s spokesperson wrote:

“The High Representative is deeply concerned by the incursion into Ramallah by Israeli security forces to seize equipment from the Palestinian television stations, Wattan TV and Al Quds Educational TV.

Incursions by Israeli forces into Palestinian cities where the Palestinian Authority, under the Oslo Accords, assumes the powers and responsibilities for internal security and public order is a breach of those accords and puts in jeopardy the internationally recognized success of Palestinian institution building efforts”.

 Bias

The statement was another example of how Ashton is influenced by Palestinian propaganda and of her bias against Israel.

The raid itself came after countless requests by the Israeli authorities to close down the pirate stations because they were interrupting legal broadcasts by other TV stations.

The IDF also mentioned that the broadcasts by the two stations interfered with aircraft communication.

Former US naval intelligence officer Jennifer Dyer wrote Missing Peace that “for broadcasts to literally step on each other and interrupt broadcasting — i.e., you see the “invading” broadcast on the authorized channel you’re tuned to — the broadcasts have to be right around the same frequency”.

About the interference of aircraft communication she wrote the following:

‘In the case of  simple electronic interference for other systems, like airport control systems, there need only be only transmissions and the right local conditions’.

 In other words it is fair to assume that the stations indeed caused interruptions and interference.

Breach of Oslo

But the real error in Ashton’s statement is her opinion about the breach of the Oslo accords by Israel.

In fact the real breach of the Oslo accords took place when the Palestinian Authority refused to take the pirate stations off the air.

The Oslo 2 accord of September 28 1995 contains an annex dealing with approved TV channels.

Here is the list of those approved channels:

Jericho	Channel 24
Nablus (Mt. Gerizim)	Channel 5
Jenin	Channel 31
Ramallah	Channel 25
Hebron	Channel 30
Gaza	Channel 31

It is obvious that neither  el-Watan TV  nor the Al-Quds TV station is on this list.

Furthermore when Ashton calls upon both parties to  “use the Israeli-Palestinian Joint Technical Committee to address any issues arising in the telecommunications field”, she obviously forgot that the Palestinian side has refused to work with Israel in the Joint Technical Committee since the beginning of the Second Intifada in 2000.

The only committee that has kept on functioning since the signing of the Oslo accords is the Joint Water Committee.

Real problem

The real problem is here that the Palestinians succeed in deluding foreign interlocutors by distorting the facts  time after time.

The credibility of the European Union  as a mediator in the Palestinian Israeli conflict is not served by the distortion of the facts and by relaying Palestinian propaganda.