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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 - 10 November 1999 Issue No. 454 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 - 10 November 1999 Issue No. 454
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters The Formentor symposium
By Mohamed Sid-Ahmed
An international symposium organised by the Foundation set up by the Spanish oil company, Repsol, was held last week in Majorca. Intended to be the first in a series of top level discussion meetings to be held once a year under the name Foro Formentor, after the name of the hotel in which it was held, the symposium was attended by the Spanish prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, and a number of prominent political figures, intellectuals, businessmen, and specialists in diverse fields such as communications, energy and the environment to discuss the political, economic and cultural problems of the Mediterranean region on the eve of a new century.
According to the literature of the meeting, freedom of thought and speech constituted the priority of its organisers, and the choice of participants was made without regard to political ideas, religious or social beliefs or any considerations other than the geographical location of their nations on the shores of the Mediterranean. Indeed, no serious debate on the problems of the region in the age of globalisation and as we enter a new millennium can be conducted in the absence of representatives from any of the Mediterranean nations, including those whose presence at such gatherings is not usually taken for granted, such as Algeria, Libya and Israel.
Practicing what they preached, the organisers made the symposium's guest of honour the new Algerian president, Abdel-Aziz Bouteflika, who is still facing a serious challenge from Islamist extremists at home and whose political roots derive from the school of radical pan-Arabism that has always been vigorously opposed to Israel. The prominent status accorded to the Algerian president at the symposium served the interests of both Spain and Algeria. For Aznar, it was an opportunity to underscore that Spain was the first member of the European Union to initiate a real rapprochement with Algeria and to try and reinstate it into the community of Mediterranean nations after its long civil war had effectively isolated it from this important component of its identity. Bouteflika, for his part, saw it as an opportunity to reaffirm Algeria's status as one of the more prominent Mediterranean states, and delivered a long speech asserting that circumstances were now favourable for overcoming the crisis that had bled his country dry for close on a decade.
What the Algerian president did not touch upon was how Algeria's opening onto its Mediterranean environment would affect its hitherto staunchly anti-Israeli stand. According to press agency reports, Bouteflika met with Shimon Peres and Israel's minister of interior and former ambassador to Spain, Shlomo Ben Ami, during the two-day symposium, but a statement issued by a presidential spokesman in Algiers denied that any such meeting ever took place. Although I was a participant at the symposium, I can neither confirm nor deny the report; what I can attest to is that Bouteflika was very cordial to all his fellow participants, including the Israelis. In weighing the pros and cons of attending a public meeting to which Israelis were also invited, the Algerian president must have been aware that his attendance would place him in a real dilemma: on the one hand, he would have to reassure the Europeans that he was not averse to meeting Israeli leaders; on the other, he would have to reassure his constituencies at home that he had no intentions of playing the normalisation game. Actually, the conflicting stories coming out of Majorca reflect the political inconsistencies of the Mediterranean region, and the very real obstacles in the way of making it a conflict-free region in the context of the explosive problems still besetting it.
Many countries bordering the Mediterranean are involved in conflict situations. The Balkans are still locked in conflict, the controversy between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus remains unresolved, a bitter civil war continues to tear Algeria apart. Most prominent of all is the Arab-Israeli conflict and the very specific rationale which has come to dominate it, notably the boycott by the Arab parties of the Israeli state and popular Arab opposition to the process of normalisation. It is precisely because of this rationale that Bouteflika was placed in an embarrassing position at Majorca.
The problem is that whenever the European states organise debates about the Mediterranean, they tend to perceive security in the Mediterranean as an extension of European security, irrespective of the security concerns of the countries on the southern shores of the Mediterranean. In a way, the European attitude resembles the Israeli approach to its security concerns, where the Palestinian dimension is perceived solely from Israel's security perspective. Thus a Palestinian state, even in the eyes of many of the Israelis who support its creation, is acceptable only to the extent that it responds to Israel's security requirements, not because it responds to the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people.
It is an approach that is becoming more prevalent in the context of globalisation. From a European vantage point, the real issue at stake is not how to ensure the collective security of the Mediterranean region, but how to prevent crisis situations on the southern shores of the Mediterranean from compromising Europe's security; in other words, how to immunise Europe from the hazards of underdevelopment and conflict situations across the Mediterranean.
Actually, disparities between the protagonists in such conflicts is not limited to the Arab-Israeli conflict alone, but marks most of the Mediterranean conflicts. This was a point I raised in my intervention to the symposium, noting that success in overcoming conflict situations in the Mediterranean will remain out of reach as long as these disparities remain and as long as the security of the Mediterranean is perceived only as a shock-absorber against security threats emanating from the South. A critical threshold must be crossed if stability and security are to become sustainable, below that threshold, attempts to overcome conflict situations will often be exposed to failure.
The European Union is thus faced with a paradox when it comes to dealing with conflicts in the Mediterranean, where short and long term interests can sometimes collide. In the short term, no developed society is willing to relinquish any advantage it may enjoy over its less privileged neighbours across the Mediterranean, but in the long term, European societies have every interest in ensuring that underdevelopment south of the Mediterranean does not adversely affect Europe's stability and security.
In my intervention, I stressed that the EU cannot afford to adopt an unbiased stance towards conflict situations characterised by uneven development between the protagonists, but should follow a policy of positive discrimination in favour of the weaker parties in order to help bridge the gap between the parties and thus help overcome conflicts. If European nations want to limit the influx of migrants from the southern shores of the Mediterranean, they cannot rely exclusively on police measures but will have to actively encourage the creation of labour-intensive industries in countries on the southern shores of the Mediterranean, even if their benefits are not immediately apparent.
An area where affirmative action by the Europeans can be particularly effective is the area of water shortage, which is expected to increase critically in all countries south of the Mediterranean in the near future. The looming water crisis will not be averted if the development of giant desalination projects is left to Israel alone; this industry should be developed separately by the Arab countries as well, not only to prevent the occurrence of water wars, but also to improve the image of those countries and hence their bargaining position with Israel to make breakthroughs towards peace more likely.
There was much talk, even in Formentor, about the 'right of intervention', on the grounds that it is impossible to isolate conflicts and keep them from adversely affecting their environment in the age of globalisation and interdependence. In recent years, intervention has become a fact of political life. We have seen it happen in Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Bosnia and Kosovo, even in the US sponsorship of the Middle East peace process. A critical development recently was NATO's replacement of the Security Council as the instrument used to implement intervention in the Kosovo crisis.
If intervention in the age of globalisation cannot be avoided, it should not be at the expense of national sovereignty. Actually, the only justifiable intervention is that which bolsters the weaker parties and thus consolidates independence and sovereignty. That is true in general and applies, in particular, when it comes to the Mediterranean basin.
