FM Kouchner and Secretary Rice, Paris Donors Conference (AP)
"When once it appeared as if the United States and Europeans were working at cross purposes in the region, now their efforts complement each other and are better viewed as opposite sides of the same coin."The belief that mutual distrust flows across the Mediterranean between Israel and Europe reflects what has been an often tenuous relationship. Traditionally, many Israelis felt that Europeans gave unconditional support to the Palestinians even in the face of intolerable violence, while Europeans once ranked Israel as a greater threat to peace than Iran or North Korea. Yet a very encouraging trend of European political and economic engagement across the entire region may be shifting the landscape. The absence of sustained American engagement in the peace process meant by necessity Europeans filled the void as best they could. Now, renewed U.S. participation and a more cooperative working partnership in the Middle East between Europe and the United States are contributing to improved relations at the government and public levels.
The European Union is now Israel’s largest trading partner, accounting for a third of its exports and nearly half of imports. Israel has enjoyed preferential trading status with the EU under the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, a meeting first convened in 1995 by then Spanish Foreign Minister Javier Solana, designed to foster better relations among the countries that surround the Mediterranean, including Israel and many Arab governments. In 2004, the EU, Israel and the Palestinian Authority adopted a European Neighborhood Policy Action Plan to further strengthen the relationship between Europeans, Israelis, and Palestinians. Solana is now the closest thing to a foreign minister the European Union has, serving as the High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, representing the EU in the Quartet, and taking an active role in the EU3 negotiations with Iran over its nuclear programs.
The EU as an entity is growing in power and influence, mostly in trade and economic policy, but the major nations of Europe still exert a large measure of independent control on foreign and security policy issues. Successive British governments have sought to shake off the country’s checkered past and play a constructive role in the region. Though Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been largely preoccupied with domestic challenges, the government of Tony Blair placed the Middle East peace process at the heart of its efforts in the region. Blair’s energy is credited in some quarters with persuading Condoleezza Rice to restart active U.S. leadership in the peace process. Blair was so personally involved that he was appointed as the Special Envoy of the Quartet focusing on supporting Palestinian governance and economic development. In this position he has the potential to bring together the strengths of the various sides, by connecting the dots between political, institutional and day-to-day progress.
Meanwhile, France has returned to active engagement in the region by taking a leading role in the international effort to rid Lebanon of Syrian control and influence. Even prior to the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, a close personal and political friend of then French President Jacques Chirac, France joined in the diplomatic push to force Syrian troops out of Lebanon. The Hariri assassination added additional energy to French efforts and Chirac’s well-known distance from Washington was an asset allowing his government to serve as the key player in bringing all sides together to reach agreement on the cessation of hostilities in the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006. French troops, along with major contributions from Italy and Spain, now patrol the Israeli-Lebanon border under the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. New French President Nicolas Sarkozy has maintained this focus. No diplomat has been more engaged in the current governmental crisis in Beirut than his Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner. At the same time, Sarkozy has allayed many Israeli fears, declaring himself a great friend of Israel.
The G8 is also a growing forum for European action to support a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and broader economic growth throughout the region. Reinvigorating the Middle East peace process was a key priority of both the British presidency in 2005 and the German 2007 presidency. The post-war West German government was one of the earliest and strongest political and financial backers of the young state of Israel – a position carried through unification to the current German government under Chancellor Angela Merkel. While Joschka Fischer was a friend of Israel but a reluctant negotiator, reigned in by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, his successor as foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, has been anything but timid. Steinmeier has formed a double-pronged negotiating team with Merkel that has reached out to a broad set of actors in the region in order to draw in pragmatic Arab governments to counter Iranian support for Hamas and provide fresh impetus to the peace process.
Cooperative work between the United States and its European allies has been a major challenge throughout the Bush administration, on any issue. Although not without bumps in the road, the sustained effort among the United States, Britain, France and Germany in the standoff over Iran’s nuclear program is a notable deviation from past discord. That partnership has carried over into the new American enthusiasm for the peace process. When once it appeared as if the United States and Europeans were working at cross purposes in the region, now their efforts complement each other and are better viewed as opposite sides of the same coin.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict arouses emotions on all sides as does perhaps no other conflict. In this environment, it is understandable that it is often seen in black and white, a zero sum game where each action in support of one side is perceived to have an opposite reaction for the other. But international relations is never that simple, and nothing about the Middle East can be easily explained. Amid all of this rancor and complexity, there are signs of progress. The European Union and individual European governments have played an increasingly constructive role in positive political and economic development throughout the Middle East. Perhaps that is why a 2007 poll for the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung in Germany found that 75 percent of Israelis supported eventual membership in the EU. That is something to build on.