European Parliament President Martin Schulz's controversial speech at the Knesset on Wednesday echoed what he told a group of left-wing Israelis a day earlier. In the Knesset speech, Schulz implied that Israel has a discriminatory water policy toward the Palestinians. He told the Knesset that he was troubled by conversations he had held with young Palestinians in Ramallah earlier in the week. "One of the questions these young people asked me which I found most moving -- although I could not check the exact figures -- was this: How can it be that an Israeli is allowed to use 70 liters of water per day, but a Palestinian only 17-" he said. Schulz also called Israeli settlement policy an "obstacle" to a peace deal and said Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip was "driving people to despair -- despair which in turn is being exploited by extremists." "The blockade may in fact undermine, rather than strengthen, Israel's security," Schulz asserted. Habayit Hayehudi leader Naftali Bennett, along with the rest of his party's ministers and MKs, walked out of the Knesset hall after Schulz's erroneous claim about Israel's water policy. On Tuesday, European Union Ambassador to Israel Lars Faaborg-Andersen hosted a dinner in honor of Schulz at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. Among those in attendance was Naomi Chazan, a former Meretz MK and deputy Knesset speaker who is now a director in the left-wing NGO New Israel Fund; Yossi Beilin, former Meretz leader and cabinet minister and one of the architects of the Geneva Initiative; Ron Pundak, who helped draft the Oslo Accords in 1993 and is a former director-general of the Peres Center for Peace; Akiva Eldar, former Haaretz correspondent, and Professor Manuel Trajtenberg, chairman of the Planning and Budgeting Committee at the Council for Higher Education. Labor MK Hilik Bar was the only politician at the event. No government or right-wing representatives were invited. At the event, Schulz said that he had just visited the Palestinian Authority, where he had been told that Israel did not distribute water fairly. He also said he was told of infringements on Palestinian freedom of movement. No one in the audience challenged Schulz on the facts or tried to set the record straight. Some of the people at the dinner said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be able to make better decisions if he faced more outside pressure. On Thursday, Schulz responded to criticism of his Knesset speech. "The people who heckled me were members of a radical party," Schulz told the German newspaper Die Welt, referring to Habayit Hayehudi. "I was surprised by their reaction. My address was pro-Israeli."
