How Europe Could Help Out in the Near East

Many of us in Europe have good reason these days to ask ourselves what it is we are really trying to do in the Near East.

Is Europe to be just “the Wailing Wall of the Arabs,” in the words of a senior official of Israel’s Foreign Ministry speaking last month to a Trilateral Commission fact-finding mission in the region? (That same official didn't mind joking that hostility toward Israel was the “only theme to have succeeded in uniting the European countries.”)

Or should we simply be content “to be invited for a sweet dessert and pay a steep bill,” as the European Union’s special envoy to the Middle East peace process, Miguel Angel Moratinos, put it recently to the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee?

Our contribution to the “bill” of a peace table from which we often feel excluded has been more than a billion Ecus ($1.1 billion), or no less than 53 percent of international aid to the West Bank and Gaza from 1994 to 1996—as against, say, 9 percent in the case of the United States.

Clearly the principal paymaster cannot long remain absent from the negotiating table.

For its participation to be meaningful in this most delicate of areas, Europe must stand unequivocally by a couple of basic principles. One is security. Security can never be a mere corollary or distant “dividend” of current peace efforts. It is simply inseparable from peace every step of the way.

It comes out clearly throughout the region that the peace process is the only constructive game in town, and as such, must go on. Security is perhaps the only true convincing argument of an Israeli administration that has otherwise unilaterally endangered the process time and again.

To ignore or underestimate the legitimacy of this concern for security can only undermine Europe’s credibility with one of the main parties. Hence the need for Europe to impress upon Palestinians and other Arab authorities the importance of a stronger, more energetically pursued commitment to security, if we are ever to play our role as an honest broker.

It is such a role that Ambassador Moratinos, on behalf of the European Union, has pioneered in recent months, especially by his promotion of a “code of conduct” for the region, to the almost unanimous praise of the parties concerned.

Apart from providing steady assistance to both sides in the conflict, another key premise for any valuable European initiative is probably to refrain from interfering when we have neither the clout nor a common position among our countries.

Acting alone, as my country unfortunately did not so long ago, almost always ends in a failure for Europe and a further muddling of the process.

Now, interestingly, nowhere is the need for a common European stance more powerfully advocated than in the Near East. Figures as disparate as former Israeli prime Minister Shimon Peres, Jordan’s Crown Prince Hassan or the Palestinian National Authority Minister Feisal Husseini use practically the same words in exhorting the nations of the European Union to act as one in helping to turn a Palestinian state-in-the-making into the bridge to broader cooperation throughout the area.

The challenge is to mobilize Europe’s unique federating experience to help bring in the Middle East at large the multilateral future on which the prosperity and well-being of its peoples depend in the next millenium. Honest broker, experienced multilateralist—this is, if we put our mouth where our money is, our chance to make a difference.