18 - 24 April 2002
Issue No.582
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 18 - 24 April 2002 Issue No.582 |
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Impasse
An emasculated European Union collapsed on the sidelines last week, alongside the Arab states, the UN and Russia, as the Israeli invasion of the West Bank entered its third consecutive week. Iason Athanasiadis reports on the diplomatic gridlock
When Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon banned EU foreign policy supremo Javier Solana from visiting the besieged Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat two weeks ago, it was a calculated snub.
HERE WAS ONCE A HOME: In Jenin, still under curfew, Palestinians seek the remnants of their lives amid the devastation Israel has wreaked with US-made helicopter gunships, tanks and bulldozers (photo AP)
The Israeli premier's wily tactical move aborted the high- level EU delegation's mission, which had been aimed at ending the Israeli army's invasion of the West Bank. It also forced Solana and his associates to leave Israel.
Sharon proceeded to add insult to injury when, the very next day, US Special Envoy for the Middle East Anthony Zinni was allowed into Arafat's battered Ramallah compound for talks. Since then, US Secretary of State Colin Powell has also been granted the kind of access to Arafat that EU diplomats are denied. EU Ambassador to Israel Gincarlo Chevallard characterised Israeli conduct as a "cheap humiliation" and spoke of "the anger of a large part of European opinion, and the political class, at this treatment of the EU."
"The European political class has not accepted that we were not allowed to see Arafat while the Americans were," he said.
It did not take long for Europe to present its response. In a surprise announcement later in the week, the European Parliament caused shock waves by passing a resolution that urged the 15-nation European Union to suspend its Association Agreement with Israel, which grants Israel preferential trade status with the EU.
Cancelling the agreement would severely hurt an already tottering Israeli economy. The EU is the country's largest trade partner. Exports to Europe make up 27 per cent of the country's total exports. Last year, Israeli exports to the EU totalled $818 billion and its imports from the EU reached $232 billion.
The Association Agreement between the EU and Israel remains intact, however. It now seems that the threat of suspension was only intended to shock Israel out of its unilateralism and a meeting of EU foreign ministers on Monday did not take any action against Israel.
Should next week find Israel still forging ahead with its unrepentant campaign in the West Bank, however, EU member states may find it easier to marshall the unanimity necessary for suspending the agreement when they get together with Arab states and Israel to assess the seven-year-old Euro- Mediterranean aid-and-trade programme. The Euro- Mediterranean agreement is the scheme through which the EU pumps billions of dollars into the region to underpin the US-led peace process. "Indications are that the conference will take place," said Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Pique, whose country currently holds the EU presidency. "We expect a high level of participation from Israel and its neighbours."
Privately, EU officials said they were bitter that millions of dollars worth of infrastructure in West Bank and Gaza Strip -- much of it paid for by the EU -- has been destroyed during Israel's ongoing military campaign.
The EU has been by far the largest donor to the Palestinian Authority since the mid-1990s, helping to finance the construction of an airport, hospital, port facilities universities, housing and sewage systems. Since 1994, the EU has provided $3.1 billion, both through the United Nations and directly, in aid to the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Yet aside from the threat of trade sanctions, the EU could do little last week but join the Arab states in the gallery in booing Israel's campaign against the Palestinians. There were plenty of choice epithets for Israel's operation, but little concrete action. Javier Solana termed the operation and its attendant "infringements of humanitarian and military law" as "intolerable," warning that "for every attacker killed or jailed, ten more have probably come forward." Kofi Annan pleaded for the dispatch of a peacekeeping force. And German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer blustered that Europe was not going to take a back seat while the US takes the destiny of the Middle East in its own hands.
Moreover, the EU's top aid official accused Israel of deliberately blocking humanitarian help for the Palestinians in the West Bank. The official, Poul Nilesen, reported that Israeli soldiers had fired at aid workers and threatened them at gunpoint in an attempt to prevent them from providing help to wounded Palestinians. He condemned Israel's behaviour as totally unacceptable and described conditions in which aid workers have to function as being "worse than Chechnya."
As the EU persisted in its bureaucratic limbo, echoed only by the Arab states' inactivity, US Secretary of State Colin Powell continued on his meandering course to Jerusalem, via Morocco, Egypt, Spain, Jordan, Israel and Lebanon.
But after an inconclusive meeting between Powell, EU foreign ministers and the third Middle East peace sponsor, Russia, it was Germany that upped the diplomatic ante, striking out onto the diplomatic stage with proposals for its very own peace plan. After months of castigating Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer waded in with a plan that sets a two-year time frame for, among other things, the withdrawal of Israeli troops, the dismantling of Jewish settlements, the creation of a Palestinian state and an internationally monitored buffer zone.
The plan, which was endorsed by EU foreign ministers, asserts that "the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can only be solved by political means" and notes that only the "peaceful coexistence of these two peoples living in two states, bound in mutual security and embedded in a regional peace that is guaranteed by the international community, particularly the USA, the EU, Russia and the UN secretary-general," can guarantee the settling of the conflict.
Despite not making provision for a cease-fire, the German proposal envisages an Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian lands once the fighting stops and the dismantling of settlements. This would be followed by the proclamation of a Palestinian state, the making of mutual commitments between Israel and the Palestinians and calls on the sponsors of the Middle East peace process to provide international guarantees.
But Germany also provoked fierce criticism when it suggested that it was ready to send troops to support a peacekeeping mission. The idea that Germans might engage in military operations on Jews, following the two peoples' not-so-distant past, caused outrage in the Israeli political establishment.
British Foreign Minister Jack Straw let it be known that Britain was also willing to contribute troops. But he also warned that such a move is, as things stand, a long time away and Britain stood alongside Germany in opposing EU sanctions on Israel at the EU ministers meeting.
The US mission's failure to end Israel's invasion has many questioning the country's credential as the world's diplomatic broker. In an article that accused US Foreign Secretary Colin Powell of effectively turning a blind eye on the mounting evidence that Israeli troops carried out a massacre in the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin, respected Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk asked:
"Is Mr Powell frightened of the Israelis? Does he really have to debase himself in this way? Does he think that meeting Arafat, or refusing to do so, takes precedence over the enormous humanitarian tragedy and slaughter that has overwhelmed the Palestinians? Is President Bush, whose demand that Ariel Sharon withdraw his troops from the West Bank has been blandly ignored, so gutless, so cynical, as to allow this charade to continue? For this is the endgame, the very final proof that the United States is no longer morally worthy of being a Middle East peacemaker."
Such writing is bound to give heart to an EU that is itching to supplement its generous economic support for the peace process with a complementary diplomatic stance. The recent announcement by European Commission President Romano Prodi spells out the EU's new position: "It is clear (US) mediation efforts have failed and we need new mediation," he said, in a clear reference to the EU.
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