Attachments
Events in 2021 – particularly the Gaza war – put in sharp relief how much Europe’s policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict needs a refresh. The European Union and its member states should use the levers they have to push for their stated goal of a peaceful resolution.
What’s new? The European Union and its member states say they remain committed to their stated two-state objective in Israel-Palestine, contending that the cost of changing their approach would be too high in light of more pressing foreign policy priorities. Yet Israel’s de facto annexation of the occupied territories continues apace.
Why does it matter? European policy appears increasingly out of tune with the reality on the ground. As the conflict’s frequent outbursts suggest, this approach can only harm Europe’s interests in keeping the door open to a negotiated solution and avoiding regular bouts of violence that could get ever harder to contain.
What should be done? A better approach would entail Europe taking steps to check the Palestinian Authority’s authoritarian drift, reviewing its no-contact policy toward the Islamist group Hamas and pressing for Palestinian political renewal. Europe might also link cooperation and trade with Israel to progress toward a two-state solution and protection of Palestinian rights.
Executive Summary
The violence that roiled Israel and Palestine in April-May 2021 tested the established European approach toward the conflict, with regard to the Palestinian Authority (PA), the Islamist movement Hamas, the calamitous situation in Gaza and Israel’s de facto annexation of the West Bank. The European Union and its member states have a stated interest in bringing about a two-state solution, and the 2021 events highlighted that their policies hinder rather than serve that objective. Many officials acknowledge the discrepancy but say the price of adopting new positions is too high for decision-makers in European capitals. Still, Europe does have levers of influence it is not using. It could abandon its permissive approach vis-à-vis the PA leadership and push for conditions that would allow for Palestinian democratic political renewal. It could also adopt a firmer line toward Israel, by at least considering the use of cooperation and trade policy to deter violations of Palestinian rights and advance a sustainable resolution of the conflict.
Events in 2021 put in sharp relief how much European policy needs a refresh. First was President Mahmoud Abbas’s April cancellation of what would have been the first Palestinian general elections in fifteen years, thus ending any immediate hope of rejuvenating Palestinian leadership. Days later came the war, the fourth between Hamas and Israel in the past sixteen years. The violence revealed, on one hand, the credit, even if short-lived, that Hamas garnered among Palestinians for standing up to Israel and, on the other, Palestinian anger toward the PA for failing to do the same, on top of its authoritarian practices and incompetence. The cancelled polls and war topped years of dramatic changes that have seen Palestine’s polity and territory fragment as successive Israeli governments explicitly reject a negotiated two-state solution. Yet European policy still hews to its modus operandi: trying to bolster the faltering PA against Hamas, while shying away from any serious effort to encourage change in Israeli policy.
On the PA, while some European officials want to do more to hold the leadership accountable for its repression, Europe’s inertia reflects fear of seeing the PA collapse in toto and the two-state solution along with it if they do so. Indeed, Europe – like the U.S. – deems Abbas and his entourage to be the only group that can guarantee a modicum of stability in the occupied territories and, by extension, Israel’s security. It is reluctant to condition its support for the PA on steps toward democratic politics and improved governance, much less elections that could bring Hamas to power. As a result, PA leaders believe they can take European aid for granted.
As for Hamas, aversion to the Islamist movement has long impeded a more constructive European approach. Since the last vote, in 2006, which Hamas won, the EU and its member states have maintained a no-contact policy toward the group. They conditioned engagement with the group – and thus in effect its inclusion in an Abbas-led unity government – on its compliance with the Quartet principles, formulated back then by the UN, the U.S., Russia and the EU: commitment to non-violence, recognition of Israel, and acceptance of the Palestinians’ previous agreements. European diplomats stationed in Jerusalem and Ramallah have long seen this policy as a dead end, eroding Europe’s diplomatic clout, obstructing its stated pursuit of a viable, democratic and contiguous Palestinian state and hampering efforts to end the sixteen-year siege of Gaza. Hamas itself rejects the Quartet conditions. But its leaders contend that they have revised their charter to address European concerns and that further steps require dialogue with the Europeans.
Many European diplomats on the ground want a change of approach, involving more political engagement and greater pressure on Israel.
Many European diplomats on the ground want a change of approach, involving more political engagement and greater pressure on Israel, but Brussels and most European capitals reject any idea of even thinking through how, for example, Europe’s cooperation and trade could be used to encourage a change of Israeli policy toward the occupied territories. Instead, European decision-makers try to compensate for political disengagement through continued humanitarian and development aid to Palestinians, even if the volume of that assistance has declined steadily since 2015. At least, they say, leaving the spigot open keeps the PA and hope for Palestinian statehood alive. Yet, behind closed doors, many European officials admit this hope is an illusion. Aid alone will never suffice to preserve the possibility of a two-state solution. In reality, Europe has moved from efforts to build a Palestinian state to attempts at managing an ever-worsening “status quo” to which it clings mainly because it sees no alternative.
Underpinning European inertia is the sense in key capitals that the costs of a change in tack are too high, the benefits too uncertain and the prospects of success too low. European leaders baulk at the price of revising policy in their bilateral relationship with Israel, especially at a time when the U.S. itself is barely engaged and influential Arab capitals are normalising ties with Israel. Few European leaders believe that Europe alone can do much. Even within Europe, forging consensus on new policy is tough: more forward-leaning states like Belgium and Ireland run up against stiff resistance to any change, notably but not only from the “Visegrád group” (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia). For powerful middle-ground states – France and Germany especially – the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’s importance pales in comparison to the war in Ukraine and the larger standoff with Russia, which they and others view as existential questions for the continent’s security. Even compared to other Middle East crises, they see it as contained and not a priority.
This calculation is understandable but mistaken. There are strong normative reasons that Europe should not ignore violations of values it claims to uphold and what prominent human rights groups now liken to apartheid-type crimes. Even leaving that argument aside, the events of 2021, like the early August exchange between Israel and the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, should serve as a warning that violence will erupt again and the conflict is not necessary contained. As Israel deepens its presence in the West Bank and a Palestinian leadership succession nears, friction points multiply; Israel itself has seen internal unrest; and Gaza will never be calm so long as it remains an open-air prison. Absent change, future bouts will be more frequent and harder to end. Plus, Europe is not powerless. Just two years ago, in the face of opposition from the Visegrád countries, European leaders helped dissuade former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from formally annexing parts of the West Bank. If Europe can surmount its inertia, it has tools that might positively alter the conflict’s trajectory.
An alternative path would first involve the EU and its member states trying to help create conditions for Palestinian political renewal in the occupied territories. Europe could hold the PA accountable for its repression, conditioning budget support for the justice and interior ministries, for example, on benchmarks. It could redirect some funds earmarked for the interior ministry to Palestinian civil society, especially human rights watchdogs. It could more decisively put its weight behind Palestinian legislative elections, while finding ways to interpret the Quartet conditions so as to allow Hamas to participate in some format in a prospective Palestinian unity government. European leaders should also launch a review of their no-contact policy toward Hamas. The idea is not to empower the Islamist movement, let alone cast it as Palestinians’ sole representative. But the group’s exclusion from politics has achieved the opposite of what the Quartet intended: its enduring popularity, certainly in the West Bank, compared with the PA. Palestinian political renewal requires its participation.
Europeans could … start discussions about how to adapt cooperation and trade policy with Israel in a way that would support … [the] peaceful resolution of the conflict.
At the same time, the EU and those member states that are prepared to do so should set a tone in relations with Israel appropriate for a country whose leadership rejects a central tenet of European foreign policy. A first step would be simply to ask the Israeli government to clarify what vision it has for resolving the conflict and thus explain the rationale for Europe funding a process that Israeli leaders themselves appear to have given up on. Europeans could at least start discussions about how to adapt cooperation and trade policy with Israel in a way that would support their main political goal, namely peaceful resolution of the conflict, as well as protection of Palestinian rights. They could also explore more mechanisms to protect Palestinian space and development in Area C, the 60 per cent of the West Bank that remains under Israeli administrative and military control.
Finally, European officials should launch a debate – at a national level and in their own circles – about what most already suggest in private: that whether or not a two-state solution, at least in its Oslo format, is already beyond reach, it is all but impossible to imagine how the parties might get there, and the time has come to consider other options. They should do so quietly, to avoid the debate getting bogged down in European division. The idea would be to ponder early what the alternatives might mean for European policy. As a bottom line, European leaders would need to make clear that they will not support any political solution to the conflict that fails to guarantee full equality for all those residing in the territory under Israeli control and jurisdiction.
Brussels, 23 August 2022