One of the foremost aspects of today’s geopolitical reality in the world is the fact that, as time goes one, the scope of the EU’s activities in the Middle East assumes qualitatively new subtleties. Whereas, as recently as a few decades ago, the EU was exclusively associated with the deployment of the so-called ‘soft power’ approach towards helping the participants of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to choose in favor of a peaceful coexistence, the organization’s officials now promote the idea that European countries have the right to contribute to the Middle East peace-process more actively. In its turn, this eventual development can be well discussed within the context of the process of the EU becoming nothing short of a quasi-state of its own. And, just as it is being the case with the de facto independent players in the arena of international politics (such as China, Russia and the US), the EU is now facing the challenge of protecting its own economic interests in the Middle East – as the world’s most geopolitically important region. In my paper, I will aim to explore the validity of this thesis at length, while outlining the history of the EU’s involvement in the Middle East peace-process, specifying this involvement’s shortcomings and hypothesizing what would be the qualitative aspects of the EU’s positioning in the Middle East in the near future.
The EC’s (European Community) first public statement, in regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, dates back to 1973, when the organization came up with the so-called Brussels Declaration, in which the Declaration’s signatories (nine Western European countries) expressed their belief in the applicability of the specifically peaceful measures to address the conflict in question. The Declaration’s main discursive aspect was the fact that it substantially parted with what used to be the US and Israeli official stance, as to the conflict’s actual causes. This is because the Declaration’s provisions subtly promoted the idea that the effective solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could not be conceived outside of Palestinians being provided with an opportunity to build their own state, which in turn implied the illegitimacy of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories (Altunisik 2008). However, the earlier mention Declaration did not have much of an effect on the conflict’s dynamics, which can be partially explained by the fact that, throughout the course of the seventies and eighties, the EC was an essentially the organization of an economic cooperation, deprived of any workable mechanisms to have its geopolitical opinions heard.
Nevertheless, as time went on, the EC (transformed into the EU in 1993) steadily solidified the scope of its executive powers, reflected by the continuous growth of the organization’s bureaucratic apparatus. This, of course, created objective preconditions for the EC’s top-officials to continue coming up with progressively sounding but factually powerless declarations, in regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These declarations were meant to enlighten the conflict’s participants that war is bad and that peace is good, such as the one passed in 1977. Still, the declarations’ foremost discursive significance was the fact that they advanced the idea that the Palestinians’ right of a political self-determination could be doubted. This point of view is being especially promoted throughout the entirety of the 1980 Venice Declaration, which is why today’s political observers commonly refer to in terms of a conceptual foundation, upon which the EU’s policies in the Middle East continue to be based. According to Hollis (2004, p. 193), “In adopting the Venice Declaration of 1980, the European Community endorsed the right of Palestinians to self-determination, and over the next two decades its members led the way towards articulation of a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian dimension of the conflict”. Yet, as it was pointed out earlier, while declaring its intention to contribute the peace-process in the Middle East, throughout the course of the Cold War era, the EC was applying very little of an actual effort, in this respect. Partially, this can be explained by the fact that, during the Cold War, Western European countries enjoyed very little operative freedom, in the geopolitical sense of this word. Being the members of NATO, which at the time was confronting the USSR and its allies, these countries had no option but adjust their foreign policies to be thoroughly consistent with those of the US.
Nevertheless, the collapse of the USSR in 1991 had brought an entirely new dimension to the EU’s positioning towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Instead of simply declaring its unacceptance of this conflict, the EU started to take active steps towards contributing to the conflict’s de facto resolution. The validity of this statement can be well illustrated in regards to the EU’s pledge to invest 500 million ECUs (European Currency Units) into rebuilding the social infrastructure in Palestine, which was articulated following the signing of the so-called Oslo Accords between the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) and the government of Israel in 1993. This pledge exposes what will become the conceptual premise of the EU’s involvement in the Middle East peace-process for years to come – specifically, the assumption that the pathway towards stabilizing the situation in the region is being concerned with the establishment of objective prerequisites for the living standards in Palestinian territories to be continually improved.
Hence, the discursive implications of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP), also known as the Barcelona Process, enacted by the EU in 1995. According to the EMP’s provisions, the main key to ensuring the quick resolution of regional armed and non-armed conflicts in the area, is assuring the economic sustainability of the regions where ethno-religious tensions between people continue to proliferate. In its turn, this explains why, while remaining committed to the EMP’s ideological postulates, the EU began to increasingly invest in helping Palestinians to achieve such sustainability. In fact, up until recently, it was specifically due to the EU’s financial aid that the Palestinian government was able to able to maintain its functional integrity. Apparently, through the course of the nineties, it was becoming increasingly clear to the EU’s top-officials that the manner, in which this organization addressed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, could no longer be limited to passing legally non-binding declarations. The explanation of this is quite apparent – throughout the course of this historical period, the members of the EU started to realize that: a) the America’s economic interests in the area did not quite correlate with those of the EU, b) the continuation of this conflict represented a clear and immediate danger to the internal security in the EU’s states, as countries with the rapidly growing population of Muslims.
This is exactly the reason why, even though that while pursuing its own interests in the Middle East through the nineties, the EU strived no to deviate from the US and Israeli peace-agenda too much, the ideological rift between the US/Israeli peace-efforts, on the one hand, and the EU’s conceptualization of the peace-process, on the other, continued to widen. This simply could not be otherwise, because; whereas, the US policies in the Middle East have traditionally been reflective of the country’s ideological commitment to always side with Israel, the EU’s conflict-related stance reflects the European countries’ economic agenda of ensuring an uninterrupted flow of the natural gas and oil from the area. Therefore, the EU is being objectively interested in maintaining good relations with the resource-rich Arab states – especially with those that oppose the America’s hegemony in this particular part of the world.
The fact that there indeed exist a number of fundamental disagreements between the EU and the US, with respect to what should be considered an appropriate strategy for the third party’s involvement in the peace-process, became especially evident after the beginning of the 2003 Iraq War. After all, the US never ceased stressing out that the EU’s participation in the process should serve an essentially complimentary purpose – European countries were expected to simply assist the US and Israel in enlarging the ‘secure areas’ in the region. Nevertheless, after the outbreak of the Iraq War, the US effectively withdrew from applying a spatially sustainable effort into advancing the cause of peace between Palestinians and Israelites. This created a paradoxical situation – despite the fact that the US continued to insist that it remains the main contributor to the peace-process; it nevertheless had ceased considering the continuation of this process being crucially vital to the protection of its national interests in the area. Consequently, the burden of maintaining the normal functioning of social infrastructures in the Palestinian territories has been placed on the EU’s shoulders. As Kupchan (2007, p. 138) pointed out, “With the United States bogged down in Iraq, Washington has had little choice but to turn to Europe to take on more responsibilities in the region”. This eventual development, however, took place without the EU’s economic/geopolitical interests in the region being recognized formally.
Partially, this explains the fiasco of the so-called 2003 Road Map plan, designed by the members of the Middle East Quartet (the US, the UN, the EU and Russia), as a tool of assuring the irreversibility of the peace-process. Apparently, while taking care of its obligations, under the Road Map (financing the continuous functioning of the Palestinian governmental institutions), the EU has been denied an opportunity to have its voice heard, within the context of the Quartet designing the methodology for the plan’s practical implementation. What made the prospects of the plan’s implementation even more illusory was the fact that the Road Map contradicted the basic provisions of the 1948 Geneva Convention, according to which the country that occupies a military-gained territory (Israel) is being fully responsible for ensuring the affected civilians’ physical survival.
Therefore, it is fully explainable why ever since 2005, the EU began to revise its formerly deployed approaches towards sustaining the peace-process in the Middle East. Whereas, prior to 2005, the EU’s officials used to assume that the organization’s financial contributions to the process were capable of improving the living standards among Palestinians in the occupied territories, they now appear to have realized the methodological fallaciousness of this assumption. This is because the actual realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict suggest that is specifically the Israeli continual occupation of the PA (Palestinian Autonomy), which prevents the affected Palestinians from being able to enjoy even a moderate-quality living. As Asseburg (2003, p. 177) noted, “Even in the years before the outbreak of the second Intifada, it had become evident that sustainable economic development (in PA) was not possible in the face of Israeli closure policies and the fragmentation of the Palestinian territories through the ongoing process of settlement and by-pass road construction”. This is the reason why, as of today, the EU’s policies in the Middle East have effectively ceased being concerned with the notion of a ‘conflict resolution’, while becoming increasingly associated with the notion of a ‘conflict management’ instead. It appears that such a conceptual shift has been triggered by: a) the EU officials’ realization of the deep-seated roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, b) the process of the US geopolitical power growing progressively undermined, c) an ongoing economic recession in the countries of the EU.
Because the concept of a ‘crisis management’ presupposes that the parties, in charge of this management, are being in a position to enforce their peace-promoting initiatives, it is fully explainable why, as of today, the EU appears to grow ever more comfortable with the idea of applying para-military efforts, as the mean of preventing the further escalation of violence. For example, in 2005 the organization established the so-called ‘EU Border Assistance Mission’ (EU-BAM Rafah) at the border between Egypt and the Gaza strip, staffed with the armed personnel (Efrat 2007). Given the fact that, as time goes on, the EU continues to grow increasingly dependent on an uninterrupted supply of natural resources from the Mediterranean area, and also the fact that European countries now tend to perceive the US in terms of a geopolitical competitor, we can well suggest that the EU will proceed deviating from its former role of a ‘normative (soft) power’ in the region.
Ever since the EU (EC) started to play an active role in the Middle East peace-process, its official representatives strived to refrain from articulating the rationale-based motivations behind the organization’s involvement in the process. Nevertheless, the self-assumed role of a ‘soft power’ in the conflict, on the part of the EU, reflected its officials’ belief in the applicability of specifically humanitarian measures, as the mean of ending hostilities between Israelites and Palestinians. Thus, we can well hypothesize that the organization’s initial objectives, in regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, were concerned with: a) providing Palestinians with objective incentives to refrain from indulging in violence against the Israeli, and vice versa, b) convincing Israel that the existence of Palestinian sovereign state is in its best interests. Therefore, it will only be logical, on our part, to assess the effectiveness of the EU’s mediating presence in the area, in regards to whether the earlier mentioned objectives have been achieved or not.
First, the EU has failed rather miserably, while promoting the concept of a peaceful coexistence between Palestinians and Israelis. The validity of this suggestion is self-evident – today’s Media report the news of Hamas launching its ‘home- made’ rockets into Jerusalem and of Israeli planes bombing the occupied Palestinian territories on a weekly, if not a daily basis. Apparently, the EU’s initial conceptualization of what should be considered a discursively adequate strategy towards dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reflected the European policy-makers’ awareness of what accounted for the sheer successfulness of British counterinsurgency campaigns in Kenya, Malaya and Oman (Ucko 2010). After all, it was namely the British authorities’ willingness to invest in rebuilding the social infrastructure in these countries, which allowed them to succeed in imposing peace and order. It appears that, by financing the Palestinian people’s ‘self-governance’, the EU’s bureaucrats expected to reduce the extent of these people’s violent-mindedness, which in turn would make them more open to the idea of negotiating peace-terms with Israel. Yet; whereas, in the earlier mentioned countries, Europeans (British) were provided with the UN mandate to exercise a military control over the insurgent-areas, this was not the case in the PA. Therefore, while sponsoring the Palestinian government, the EU was effectively deprived on any instruments to exercise a control over how the provided money was being spent – hence, the utter inefficiency of the implementation of the EU’s ‘humanitarian’ initiatives in the Middle East.
This exposes another reason why the deployment of the EU’s ‘soft’ peace-facilitating policy in the area proved a failure. While believing in the postulates of a political-correctness, which denies the possibility that the particulars of people’s ethno-cultural affiliation may have an effect on how they act, Euro-bureaucrats did not take into consideration the behavioral inclinations of Palestinians, as people endowed with an essentially tribal mentality, which in turn presupposes their lessened sensitivity towards the outbreaks of violence (Tessler & Nachtwey 1999). This also explains why the Palestinian Autonomy’s governmental officials have traditionally been known for their corruption. As it was by pointed out by Asseburg in the previously quoted article, “The Palestinian political system is characterized by the prevalence of informal institutional arrangements and clientelism, by authoritarian government practices and human rights abuses, and by an inflated and inefficient public sector responsible for the misuse of funds” (p. 178). Therefore, there can be few doubts as to the fact that the implementation of the EU’s ‘soft’ approach to managing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was doomed to fail from its very outset, because this approach’s conceptual premise reflected the lack of a cognitive adequacy, on the part of its advocates.
Second, the EU also failed in convincing Israelis to revise their attitude towards the very concept of Palestinian statehood. In part, this can be explained by the fact that, as opposed to what it is being the case with their ideologically indoctrinated European counterparts, Israelis are being perfectly aware that Palestinians are quite incapable of realizing what the concept of a statehood stands for, in the first place. This is because the very particulars of the Palestinian people’s ‘brain wiring’ prompt them to live in the state of a perpetual/anti-social anarchy. The validity of this statement can be illustrated in regards to the statistical data, according to which Palestinian immigrants/refugees account for the majority of convicted gang-rapists in Western countries (Feldman 2008). This is the reason why, after having tried to appease Palestinians in a variety of different ways, the Israeli officials effectively abandoned the idea that these people can be reasoned with – yet, this idea constituted the conceptual premise of how the EU used to propose the conflicting parties should go about reaching a peace-agreement with each other.
Nevertheless, it is not only that the sheer ineffectiveness of the EU’s policies in the Middle East can be exposed in regards to their failure to prevent the further escalation of violence in the region, but also in regards to their detrimental effects on the extent of the EU’s overall geopolitical influence. This because the EU’s pro-Palestinian stance never ceased being largely artificial – every time when the EU’s Mediterranean agenda appeared to conflict that of the US, Euro-bureaucrats were quick enough to adjust it. The full legitimacy of this suggestion can be shown in relation to the fact that, even though European countries are being objectively interested in supporting the secular government of Bashar Assad in Syria, they nevertheless continue to lend support to the Syrian opposition, which strives to turn Syria into yet another ‘Islamic state’. This, of course, prevents us from suggesting that, as of today, the EU can be considered a de facto independent player in the arena of the Middle Eastern politics. At the same time, however, there is a certain rationale in suggesting that this state of affairs will not last for much longer, as the qualitative dynamics in the area create objective preconditions for the EU to grow ever more active. That is, if this quasi-state manages not to fall apart, due to the rising antagonisms between its own state-members.
In recent years, the process of designing domestic and foreign policies in the EU’s countries appears to have been adjusted to correspond with the notion of sanity. This suggestion’s discursive soundness can be illustrated in regards to the public speeches of Angela Merkel (German Chancellor) and James Cameron (British Prime Minister), in which these high-ranking officials proclaimed the utter failure of ‘multiculturalism’ in the EU, and in regards to the passing of anti-Islamist legislations in France (Bullock 2011). This helps to explain why, as of recently, there have been a number of conceptual shifts to the EU’s Middle Eastern policy. For example, the EU’s stance on the conflict has effectively ceased being explicitly pro-Palestinian. In addition, the EU no longer makes a deliberate point in positioning itself as solely the ‘civilian power’ in the region.
Nevertheless, it is highly unlikely that, despite having undergone the earlier mentioned discursive transformation, the EU’s standpoint on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will continue to remain formally unified. This is because the EU consists of ‘psychologically’ (and economically) incompatible countries, such as Britain, Germany and Sweden, on the one hand, and Greece, Portugal and Romania, on the other, with the socioeconomic tensions between these counties continuing to rise, as we speak (Dagci 2007). Still, the objective laws of history predetermine specifically the ‘Nordic’ countries’ continual dominance within the EU. Because of these countries’ legacy of Protestantism, they are being naturally inclined to side with Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Israel is assumed to be populated by the God’s ‘chosen people’). Therefore, just as it was implied earlier, if the EU continues to exist in the future in its present form (which is a rather doubtful prospect), its involvement in the Middle East peace-process will be increasingly deemed pro-Israeli. Apparently, even the EU’s most politically correct functionaries can no longer remain arrogant of the fact that the continual failure of the involved third-parties to bring an end to the conflict, suggests that there can be only one effective solution to the situation in question – a wholesale elimination of either one of the conflict’s participants. This, of course, makes the continuation of the peace-process increasingly pointless. Because eliminating Israel would prove an impossible task and because the today’s UN has been effectively deprived of any instruments (with the exception of purely formal ones) of affecting the political developments in the world, there can be very a few doubts as to the bleak future of the Palestinian Autonomy. Figuratively speaking, in the Middle East there is simply no enough room for all. And, it appears to be only the matter of time, before the EU will come to terms with this politically incorrect but discursively legitimate truth.
References:
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