International

Here in Brussels everything turns on the question of attention. You want the public to know about a social problem, to attract attention to it so that political pressure is created. But how do you make the problem visible? Well, you can do it by demonstrating, as the postal workers did this week, shouting at the tops of their voices on the square outside the European Parliament to show their anger at the liberalisation of the postal market.

SP Member of Parliament Harry van Bommel is seriously concerned about a military decree which will allow the Israeli armed forces to remove people from the West Bank of the Jordan. Van Bommel, the Socialist Party's foreign affairs spokesman, today asked Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen for his comments on the content and implications of this decree, a demand which won the backing of the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs. “This move by Israel is in conflict with international law and for that reason the Dutch government should be giving its opinion on it," says Van Bommel. "I'm calling on the Foreign Minister to condemn this measure."