Is there a European approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict? At first sight the answer is yes. The European Union Council of Foreign Ministers meets regularly and draws up declarations and statements. Occasionally, one of its envoys is sent to talk to the respective leaders in the region. The EU helped bankroll the Palestinians in various forms. This was done in full agreement with the United States and Israel, who were happy to see some money flowing to the Palestinians to pay for salaries and build infrastructure. There was predictable criticism of the corrupt abuse of this funding to help pay for the lavish life-style of the Arafat clan in Paris and elsewhere. But without EU money, the level of despair and anger and the consequent turn to violence among Palestinians would have been much higher. But, having taken part for some years in EU foreign ministers’ deliberations, I have been struck by the lack of an effective and coherent joined-up EU policy. Nor has there been a sufficient understanding that firmness was needed in making clear to the Palestinian leadership that its quest for legitimacy demanded a renunciation of the ideology of conquest. In that sense, the Quartet’s demands should be the irreducible minimum for bringing Hamas out of the language of “resistance, which is just code for violence, and into the harder politics of peace. But questions remain over whether Europe can itself find a common way forward. Each European state has its own tortured relationship with the region. Germany, for example, can never break with its historic obligation to Israel and the Jewish people. This is no Holocaust-industry, Shoah-guilt syndrome; it is a part of the ineradicable DNA of German politics. French President Jacques Chirac’s approach to Syria typifies the personalization of foreign policy in France. He has sought to make Syria a pariah state, refused to have normal relations with Damascus, and worked intimately with the US in shaping anti-Syrian resolutions at the United Nations. Little matter that the murdered Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, used to visit Damascus every week. Chirac’s intimate relationship with Hariri is the tail wagging the dog of France’s relationship with Syria. Recently, the French daily Le Monde revealed the depth of French oil, gas, automobile and other interests in Iran. It has also suggested that France is breaking ranks with the rest of the EU and the US in cozying up to Tehran in order to protect its soldiers now deployed in Lebanon. This may be well-informed Paris political speculation, but it remains the case that France acts as a lone gun in the Middle East. The key test will be whether the French soldiers now in Lebanon stop Hezbollah from rebuilding its networks of tunnels from where it can launch rocket attacks on Israelis. If reports are true that Hezbollah is rearming and restocking its missile arsenal and that the French, Spanish and Italian troops in place are allowing this to happen, then the claim that Europe is now helping to bring calm and peace on the Israel-Lebanon front will prove hollow. It is one thing not to actively disarm Hezbollah, but it is another for France’s finest fighting soldiers to sit around and do nothing while Hezbollah rearms. Unfortunately, Israeli politicians ignore Europe, preferring to make the US their only reference point for active international politics. It is also unclear if setting down non-negotiable conditions for talks or relations with the elected representatives of the Palestinians helps or hinders effective forward movement. But Hamas’ charter, with its deplorable language when describing Jews, and the statements of its Damascus-based leader, Khaled Meshaal, represent to most Europeans intolerable barriers to finding a way forward to effective talks. Still, Europe, unlike the US, has long experience of living with the politics of rejection, compromise and impossible demands. Sinn Fein-IRA in Ireland and ETA in the Basque country are two recent examples of terrorist political groups that made such demands – the withdrawal of the elected United Kingdom government from northern Ireland despite the majority of people there wishing to remain British citizens; or the separation of the Basque area of Spain from the rest of the country -despite there being no electoral, democratic mandate for this process. But these issues have been overcome. The key difference in the Middle East is the presence of non-state, Islamist actors who refuse all the norms of interstate relations as have been defined by international law over many centuries. And what is missing in Europe is a clear-headed political analysis of the new Islamist ideologies that are driving politics in the region. Of the three motor forces in international politics – state interests, national politics and ambition and totalizing ideological belief – it is the latter that is always the most difficult to deal with. In confronting Islamist fundamentalist politics, which Europe is now seeing steadily implanting itself in domestic politics in most of the richer EU member states; a new rulebook needs to be written. The conditions laid down by the Quartet – recognition of Israel, an end to violence and abiding by past agreements – need to be sustained. Ever since 1967, Europe has seen a growth of a “blame Israel first politics. Politicians of left and right, in government and opposition, have bent over backwards to find excuses for Palestinian, Arab, or Islamist extremist or rejectionist politics. It’s time for Europe to put an end to such behavior.
Denis MacShane is a British MP and former Foreign Office minister. He was deputy to the foreign secretary in 2002-5 as minister of state for Europe. He remains a personal envoy for Prime Minister Tony Blair to European governments and political parties. This commentary first appeared at bitterlemons-international.org, an online newsletter.
