EU Policy towards the Israel-Palestine Conflict: The Limitations of Mitigation Strategies

ABSTRACT

Over the decades, the EU has aimed at resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict through its Foreign and Security Policy (EUFSP) tools, with the ‘two-state solution’ as the over-arching principle for conflict resolution. This policy has been ineffective due to the contextual interplay of multipolar competition, regional fragmentation and EU-level internal contestation. Faced with these contextual constraints, the EU has employed a range of mitigation strategies: delegation as an institutional measure through its Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) missions; multilateralisation as a diplomatic/coalitional measure through its participation in the Quartet and other multilateral platforms; and selective engagement as a functional measure through its trade ties with both actors and humanitarian aid policies in order to mitigate the impact of the contextual constraints. However, none of the EU’s mitigation actions have adequately alleviated the impact of the three contextual constraints because of intra-regional sensitivities, divergences and violent clashes, as well as Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestinian lands with the protection of the United States (US).

KEYWORDS:

• European Union
• Israel
• Palestine
• two-state solution
• Arab-Israel conflict

Relations between Israel and Palestine are arguably at a historical low. Hamas’ vicious attack on Israeli towns at the border on 7 October 2023 and Israel's brutal military response have sparked an escalation in violence and an increasingly desperate humanitarian situation in the Gaza strip. Up until that day, the United Nations labelled 2022 as the “deadliest year” for Palestinians since 2006, especially in the West Bank (Tahhan and Humaid 2022) and the prospects for the future were already bleak. In December 2022 veteran Israeli politician Benjamin Netanyahu emerged as the leader of what is arguably the most far-right and religious-nationalist government in Israel’s history, with some of Netanyahu’s ruling partners openly favouring annexation of all Palestinian lands in the West Bank or, at the very least, a further expansion of Israeli settlements, as well as an escalation of violence against the occupied population (Council on Foreign Relations 2023).

External players have attempted to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute for many years. Following the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, the United States (US) claimed the monopoly over mediation efforts, side-lining the Soviet Union, the UN and international law. The current track record indicates US’s endeavours have yielded little, and its perceived bias towards Israeli interests, particularly within Congress, has eroded Washington’s credibility as a dependable mediator for peace. As an external player, the EU’s engagement in this conflict takes place against the backdrop of its ambition to project global power and effectively tackle regional and/or global threats with direct or indirect repercussions for European political, economic or security interests.

The conflict between Israel and Palestine has been a matter of political concern for European countries even before the EU established its Common Foreign and Security Policy with the Treaty of Maastricht in 1993, as the Union had established its foreign policy cooperation (European Political Cooperation [EPC]) in the 1970s as a response to this conflict. During the years following the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference and the 1993 Oslo Accords – an agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PO) that established the Palestinian Authority (PA) – EU member states and institutions put their differences aside and committed themselves to consolidating this opportunity for peace.

In the European Security Strategy (ESS) of 2003, the EU explicitly tasked itself with conflict management, especially in its neighbourhood, and identified the resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict as a strategic priority (Council of the European Union 2003). The EU has long supported a ‘two-state solution’ to the conflict. The most notable reference to the two-state solution by the EU was the Venice Declaration of June 1980, where the European Council affirmed the need for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East based on the principle of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side within secure and recognised borders. The 2016 Global Strategy also included the EU’s ambition to deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the goal of preserving “the prospect of a viable two-state solution based on 1967 lines with equivalent land swaps, and to recreate the conditions for meaningful negotiations” (Council of the European Union 2016).

Good intentions and commitments notwithstanding, recent developments in Israeli domestic politics, as well as the declining legitimacy and dysfunction of the PA, have led to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict commanding less importance for the EU than it did in previous decades. Whereas the region’s principal actors became increasingly disinterested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the divisions between EU member states over how to assess and respond to the new reality of a stalled ‘peace process’ have effectively undermined the EU’s position as mediator or facilitator. Moreover, the changing regional and international environment, specifically the Arab uprisings and the civil wars in Libya and Syria, the ensuing migration issue, and finally the war in Ukraine, have shifted the EU’s attention. The events of October 2023 marked the pivotal moment in the conflict and highlight the EU’s diminished interest, with the contradictions within the Union becoming increasingly apparent.

This article accepts the well-known fact that the EU aims at resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict through its Foreign and Security Policy (EUFSP) tools and uses the two-state solution as its the over-riding principle for the resolution of this conflict as explained above. The first part deals with how the scholarship reflects on the question of EUFSP effectiveness (or lack thereof) in the case of the Arab-Israeli conflict. As discussed by Riccardo Alcaro and Hylke Dijkstra (2024, this Special Issue), “the effectiveness of EUFSP is a function of the (in)ability of the EU and its member states to navigate intra-EU contestation, address crisis and conflict complexity and leverage against other powers pursuing diverging objectives from their own”. Accordingly, the second part of this article demonstrates how the contextual interplay of multipolar competition, regional fragmentation and internal contestation has made the EU ineffective towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Thirdly, this article investigates whether the EU’s mitigation strategies were able to alleviate the impact of internal contestation, regional fragmentation and multipolar competition. By drawing on the vast literature on the issue, as well as on interviews conducted by the authors with EU officials and the officials in Israel/Palestine between October 2022 and January 2023 on a non-attributable basis, this article aims to analyse the different types of EU mitigation strategies and their effectiveness in alleviating the contextual limitations of EUFSP towards the Israeli-Palestine conflict. This article argues that it is at present highly unlikely for EUFSP to become more coherent and consequently effective, since the macro-level objective of a two-state solution cannot be obtained, mostly because of intra-regional sensitivities, divergences and violent clashes, as well as Israel’s ongoing five-decade-long occupation with US protection.

The EU’s (ineffective) policy towards the Israel-Palestine conflict

The EU’s approach towards the Israel-Palestine conflict has attracted scholarly attention in EU studies, mostly within the context of the Union’s peacebuilding capacity and capabilities. Most of the numerous academic studies agree that the EU could employ a wide variety of foreign policy tools at its disposal, yet its action remains limited due to many factors. For example, as Patrick Müller (2012, 2) correctly states, while the EU has “succeeded in strengthening its effectiveness in international affairs and in developing a common vision on resolving the Israeli-Palestine conflict, still it finds it difficult to translate its foreign policy instruments into a cohesive and effective approach”.

In explaining this ineffectiveness, many scholars criticise the EU for its inability to convince Israel to end its international law violations (for example, Dajani and Lovatt 2017) and more generally to positively influence domestic politics in Israel and Palestine (Tocci 2005; Altunisik 2008; Bouris 2014). The Union has proved unable to condemn Israel’s illegal annexations as well as its settlement policies and violent acts, despite its discourse promoting democracy as a fundamental value. Democratic values are frequently downgraded in the region in favour of economic and security concerns (Pace 2009). Michelle Pace (Ibid) also argues that the incapacity of the EU to condemn Israel undermines its normative power claims in the Middle East Peace Process (MEPP).

The EU has also been criticised for its inability to encourage Palestinians to seriously and rigorously pursue state-building. There is a notable body of work dedicated to exploring the EU’s financial support for the Palestinians and its direct impact on Palestinian state-building (Dimitris Bouris and Daniela Huber 2017). Also, Shayma Bawatneh’s (2020) research on the impact of foreign aid on Palestinian local development sheds light on how EU financial support plays a crucial role in nurturing sustainable local development within the Palestinian territories. These works, in essence, underline how the EU’s financial support is essential yet ineffective in the broader context of Palestinian state-building. One reason as to why the EU has failed to transform either Israel or Palestine and compel them to address the root causes of conflict is generally associated with its unwillingness to use punitive measures against these actors due to its own internal divisions (Persson 2018). In addition, Costanza Musu (2010) suggests that the EU’s inactivity is explained by the limitations of the Common Foreign and Security Policy’s intergovernmental framework, which is subject to the unanimity rule. Some member countries diverge from policies ostensibly agreed upon at the EU level and follow their own paths in dealing with the Israeli-Palestine conflict due to domestic concerns. Moreover, “the alliances Israel is creating with Eurosceptic actors” where “each side hopes to benefit from these alliances to advance particular interests” form another limitation (Pardo and Gordon 2018, 399). Finally, Raffaella Del Sarto (2019) argues that European policies remain wedded to the outdated Oslo framework for a two-state solution, hindered by the EU’s decision-making process, international consensus challenges and the prioritisation of regional stability.

The complex ineffectiveness of the EU is also acknowledged in Palestine and Israel, where Israelis “depicted a world of hard power and uncertainty and suggested the EU cannot act assertively to count as a key player in such a world, whereas in Palestine the ineffectiveness of the EU (despite its aid being appreciated) reflects the longstanding ineffectiveness of the international community as a whole” (Miskimmon and O’Loughlin 2019, 5). Thus, EUFSP is diagnosed as suffering a capabilities-expectations gap (Hill 1993) in dealing with this conflict, as perceived by the peoples of Israel and Palestine and as acknowledged by scholars.

The contextual challenges on EUFSP

In order to analyse the ineffectiveness of EUFSP towards the Israeli-Palestine conflict, the level of internal contestation within the EU, as well as the regional fragmentation and multipolar competition among the states of the region (and beyond), will be discussed in the following.

Multipolar competition

The first factor is multipolar competition, whereby regional and global powers construe international crises as arenas of strategic confrontation, thus hindering effective crisis management (Herd 2010; Kupchan 2012; Mead 2014; Alcaro 2018; Dandashly et al. 2021). In this specific case, the EU does not have much leverage, particularly against the US that often pursues diverging objectives unilaterally.

The US is the main financier of the Israeli security sector and almost the only actor with significant leverage over Israel. Since the late 1970s, following the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty, the US has dominated mediation efforts. The historical record indicates that despite genuine efforts by the administrations of George Bush Senior and Bill Clinton, Washington’s perceived partiality to Israeli concerns, especially within Congress, has ultimately undermined its credibility as a reliable peace broker in the eyes of the international community (Shannon 2017; Slater 2021).

The active intervention of US President Donald Trump (2017-21) in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reiterated Washington’s favourable disposition towards Israel. During his presidency the US recognised Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights from Syria, transferred the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and closed the consular office that dealt with Palestinians’ needs. It is obvious that the US has acted in violation of international law, specifically the principle of pacta sunt servanda since third parties are obliged to recognise illegal situations under the Geneva Conventions.

The US has not acted as an honest broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict even under current President Joe Biden, who has not reversed any of Trump’s controversial decisions. The Palestinian Representative office in Washington remains closed and the Biden Administration has done little to address the deteriorating security situation on the ground. Washington continues to refrain from putting meaningful pressure on the Israelis, which de facto amounts to a blank cheque to the Israelis in the Palestinian territories.

The war in Ukraine has diminished Russia’s role in the region but has not erased it. Importantly for the MEPP, however, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made the already ineffectual Quartet – a MEPP facilitation group created in the early 2000s by the US, Russia, the EU and the UN – defunct in its original composition, increasing the need to rely on other channels and fora. A key impact of developments in Ukraine is that it has profoundly deepened perceptions of Western double standards across the Arab world. The refusal of Western countries to make a direct comparison between Ukraine and Palestine – the occupation of each being seen as unacceptable and acceptable, respectively – has been widely criticised, both within and beyond the Arab world (Short 2022). Another significant impact of the Ukraine war has been to exacerbate the trend of regional and international de-prioritisation of the MEPP and the plight of the Palestinian people, as the attention of the EU and the US has largely shifted to confronting Russia in Eastern Europe. Moreover, the war has pushed the EU to explore alternative suppliers of energy and Israel, with its offshore gas reserves – bilaterally and in tandem with Egypt – has emerged as a potential candidate, thereby further increasing its leverage. In 2022 the EU signed a memorandum with Israel and Egypt on energy matters that was heralded by the then Israeli minister for energy as “a historical moment” (European Commission 2022a; Government of Israel 2022).

When it comes to regional actors, the rallying cry of the Palestinian cause which united Arab societies until 1967 within the bonds of Pan-Arabism has long lost its salience. The trend for some Arab countries/elites to normalise relations with Israel independently from advances in the peace process is symptomatic of this trend, even though the Arab people still strongly support the Palestinian cause as seen in the rallies during the Qatar World Cup and in public opinion polls (Jahnsan 2020).

However, the tangible benefits of closer ties with Israel are readily sought by Arab regimes that no longer fear the same kind of public backlash they did a decade ago. Still, the periodic flaring up of violence and politically provocative acts by Israeli politicians, such as the visit of Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir to the Temple Mount or Al-Aqsa complex in East Jerusalem, still trigger angry reactions. Yet, these no longer guide the policies of Gulf Arab governments towards Israel in the way they used to. Arab leaders still reaffirm their commitment to Palestinian statehood and the two-state solution, yet they do not hesitate to establish contacts with Israel independent of the peace process. With other priorities topping Arab rulers’ agenda, they are not willing to employ their leverage on Israel in order to advance the peace process with the Palestinians, which has been evident in the Abraham Accords process.

The conclusion of the Accords in 2020 to normalise relations between Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain (and later that year, Sudan and Morocco), with the mediation of the Trump Administration, effectively side-lined the MEPP, since the Accords contained no provisions to secure peace between Israel and Palestine or stop the ongoing violence between the parties. Furthermore, the Accords were not supported by Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia (Feierstein and Guzansky 2022) and they were not supported by the Arab citizens in general. The wave of normalisation agreements with barely any preconditions on the Palestinian question has reassured Israel that it can have relations with the rest of the world, including Arab countries, without investing in peace with the Palestinians.

Europe’s response to the Abraham Accords has been supportive but cautious and unenthusiastic. The reactions of both the EU and its member states have been somewhat positive, with generic statements underlining the importance of the Accords in contributing to regional conflict resolution without going into specifics. The lack of a shared understanding of the deeper significance and impact of the Accords has prevented EU member states from spelling out their inherent challenges, also for the MEPP (Trigano 2021; Dachtler 2022; Munin 2023). There is no indication that EU member states have urged the UAE to be openly critical of Israel’s settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, or that they have used the ongoing momentum of normalisation to encourage Israel to move to a position of non-occupation and non-annexation.

Regional fragmentation

Regional fragmentation refers to two separate but often interrelated processes, namely the dysfunctionality of regional governance and conflict resolution mechanisms, and the erosion of state capacity to set and enforce rules consistently across the territory (Cunningham 2016; Börzel and Risse 2021; Levallois 2021). Both dimensions affect the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

First, there is a lack of a regional governance mechanism for conflict resolution. A popular hope underlying regional cooperation schemes such as the Abraham Accords or the Negev Forum (involving Israel, Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco, the UAE and the US) has been to encourage Arab states to play a leading role in regional security, with a revival of the 2002 Arab peace initiative – according to which all Arab countries would recognise Israel in exchange for a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders – as one possible avenue. So far there has been little tangible movement towards this goal, however. The Abraham Accords or Negev Forum meetings have remained largely symbolic, and most of the concrete cooperation is taking place at a strictly bilateral level (notably, Israel-UAE and Israel-Morocco).

On the Palestinian side, the consequence of sustained occupation has delegitimised PA institutions and contributed to the de-democratisation and fragmentation of Palestinian politics. The lack of intra-Palestinian reconciliation between the PA and Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007, as well as the erosion of legitimacy and deteriorating security, have all contributed to the recognition that the road to a two-state solution has reached a dead-end. The EU has adopted a no-contact policy with Hamas since it was included in the EU list of terrorist organisations in 2003. This practice was re-affirmed by the non-recognition of its victory in the 2006 PA parliamentary elections, which has contributed to the fragmentation of the Palestinian political landscape and further limited the EU’s influence in the MEPP.

Another trend in Israel detrimental to the peace process is the shift from the two-state solution towards increased legitimisation of Israeli settlement construction, which “doubled during the Oslo years” and “has continued unabated” (Del Sarto 2019, 382). The Netanyahu-led government, which includes openly pro-annexation parties, is an expression of that trend. Indeed, this settlement activity has reflected the right-wing shift in Israeli politics which has been marked by a growing influence of conservative and nationalist ideologies emphasising security interests and territorial concerns. The right-wing shift has had a significant impact on policies related to settlements, the peace process and relations with Palestinians, affecting the overall political landscape in Israel (Klein 2010; Del Sarto 2017; Feinstein and Ben-Eliezer 2019). The resulting policies – continuation of settlement expansion, limitation of access to holy sites for Palestinians, police brutality and other actions – are all working against a conducive environment, thereby also reducing the viability of international efforts on the MEPP.

Internal contestation

Intra-EU or internal contestation refers to challenges by actors within the EU to either fundamental norms or long-standing positions and established practices of EUFSP (or a combination of these elements) for reasons of domestic expediency (Lovato 2021). The evolution of national politics in some EU member states has accentuated an intra-EU gap in terms of perceptions, principles and policies, hampering the difficult task of reaching a consensus on sensitive topics, such as Israel and Palestine. Nowadays, though, politicisation of the Israel-Palestine issue enables dissenting member states to obstruct a common decision in a deliberate attempt not only to favour one of the parties but also to weaken EU unity (Voltolini 2020).

For instance, the Visegrad states (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) blocked joint EU statements such as the “one criticising the January 2020 Trump Prosperity to Peace plan and warning Israel not to move toward formally annexing parts of the West Bank” (International Crisis Group 2022, 4; Dyduch 2018). This division was also apparent at the EU foreign ministers’ meeting of 12 May 2021, when Hungary opposed a call on Israel and Hamas to cease hostilities in the Gaza Strip since the proposal did not condemn Hamas sufficiently (Islam and Ertan 2021). EU disunity was also apparent after the 7 October attack, for example, during the vote on the UN resolution on 12 December 2023 calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and the unconditional release of the hostages as a response to the war in Gaza. Austria and the Czech Republic opposed it, whereas Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Romania and Slovakia abstained, and the other member states voted in favour (UN News 2023).

In Hungary, the reluctance to criticise Israel has stemmed not only from the far-right political tendencies of Prime Minister Victor Orban, who has a close relationship with the Netanyahu government, but also from the fact that Hungary is one of Israel’s main trading partners. In fact, defence procurement from Israel by EU member states has continued unabated. Israeli drones have been purchased by France (in 2011) and Germany (in 2018). Furthermore, “in 2020 Airbus and two Israeli air and space companies were mandated by the EU to fly drones over the Mediterranean Sea to monitor migrant smuggler ships” (Haddad 2021). Furthermore, the then Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz put the Israeli flag on the roof of the chancellery building in Vienna during the violent events of May 2021, when Israeli forces brutally repressed protests at the border with the Gaza Strip, while then German Chancellor Angela Merkel renewed Germany’s support for Israel’s right to self-defence.

The inertia resulting from the lack of consensus among European actors – most notably among member states, but also across EU institutions – has severely conditioned EUFSP towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. EU member states fall into roughly three camps: the first group emphasises human rights and international law and is often seen as pro-Palestinian (including Ireland, Belgium and Luxemburg); the second group stresses balance and good relations with both Israel and Palestine (including Denmark, France and Spain); and the third group supports Israel (including Germany, Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic). Public opinion also varies widely across member states, leading to different political decisions and priorities (Hirsch and Coi 2021).

Another major difference is between those countries whose positions have changed little in the last decades and those that did change position, either due to a re-evaluation of foreign policy interests (for example, Greece turning towards Israel from a traditional pro-Palestinian and pro-Arab stance because of Eastern Mediterranean gas) or leadership changes in domestic politics (such as Sweden and Italy tilting towards a pro-Israeli stance under current right-wing governments). Furthermore, as mentioned above, some member states have actively obstructed EU policy towards Israel-Palestine, notably the Visegrád states with Hungary at the fore (Pardo and Gordon 2018). In several instances, the policy of these states has not been to lobby the EU to adopt a certain position, but for the EU not to express any criticism via-à-vis Israel (International Crisis Group 2022, 4; Dyduch 2018; Islam and Ertan 2021).

There are also discrepancies across EU institutions. The Commission has formally displayed a balanced stance by calling on both sides to agree both on the 1967 borders and the terms of peace (EUEAS 2020). The European Parliament (EP) has approached the issue more critically and has taken positions that are more vocally in favour of Palestinian rights. Recently, it called for a European peace initiative that would support the two-state solution and called on Israel to end its illegal settlements, while recognising Israel’s right to respond to any acts of violence. Moreover, the EP insists on elections in Palestine, which have not taken place since 2006 (European Parliament 2022). As the discordant array of perspectives among member countries has become evident since the outbreak of the crisis on October 7th, the divergences among EU institutions have also come to the fore.

Table 1 summarises how the effectiveness of EU policies and politics regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict is constrained. As discussed in the Introduction to this Special Issue, “In crises and conflicts where all three contextual challenges are present to considerable degrees […] EUFSP is heavily constrained” (Alcaro and Dijkstra 2024, 2024). This part has shown that, in the case of the Israel-Palestine conflict, the EU has been heavily constrained.

Table 1. Constraining factors on EUFSP towards the Israel-Palestine conflict.

EUFSP Constraint	Operationalisation	Explanation
Multipolar competition	Scope and nature of competition: both wide and narrow, zero-sum and limited	US uncritical support for Israel, weakening EU resolve to press Israel War in Ukraine and Russia’s role in the Middle East, making the Quartet defunct, EU attention directed to Ukraine The Gulf countries’ normalisation of relations with Israel without the peace condition
Regional fragmentation	Level of fragmentation: sub-national, regional Phase of fragmentation: conflict prevention, ongoing conflict	Erosion of state capacity and lack of intra-Palestinian reconciliation Increasing division of political parties/ actors in Palestine Provocative acts by Israeli politicians and violence sparked in both Israel and Palestine Ongoing drift in Israeli society and politics, away from the two-state solution and towards an increased legitimisation of settlement activity Abraham Accords and Negev Forum not dealing with peace conditions The tragic events of 7 October 2023
Intra-EU contestation	Contesting actors: EU domestic constituencies, EU Commission and European Parliament, Public opinion	First group of member states stressing human rights and international law, leaning pro-Palestinian (including Ireland, Belgium and Luxemburg) Second group of member states stressing balance and good relations with both Israel and Palestine (including Denmark, France and Spain) Third group of member states tilting towards Israel (including Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece and Italy) The Commission is balanced, the EP is more favourable towards Palestinian rights Public opinion varies a lot across member states, leading to different political decisions and priorities
	Object of contestation: level of EU engagement, choice of policies and instruments	Lack of consensus on EU statements such as the one that criticised the Trump administration’s ‘Prosperity to Peace’ plan Diverging interests No-Hamas contacts

EU mitigation measures: strengths and weaknesses

Alcaro and Dijkstra (2024, this Special Issue) suggest that the EU resorts to different strategies or practices in order to mitigate the effect of contextual challenges, which can be grouped under three main typologies: institutional, functional and diplomatic/coalitional. In the context of Israel-Palestine, the EU has employed a strategy of delegation through Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) missions, a strategy of multilateralisation through its participation in the Quartet and other multilateral platforms, and a strategy of selective engagement through its trade ties with both actors, as well as humanitarian aid policies to mitigate the impact of the contextual constraints (Table 2).

Table 2. Mitigation strategies of constraints on EUFSP towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Strategy	Intra-EU divisions	Regional fragmentation	Multipolar competition
Institutional Delegation of responsibilities * CFSP Operations	Allowed consensus-building among member-states, alleviating their diverging interests	Contributed to Palestinian state-building, in order to operationalise a two-state solution
Functional Selective engagement * Humanitarian aid * Trade ties		Contributed to Palestinian state-building
Diplomatic Multilateralisation * Quartet *UfM	Provided legal basis for the EU to pursue a two-state solution for some time despite the diverging views of individual EU member states	Allowed the EU to pursue the policy of a two-state solution under the auspices of the Quartet or other Multilateral platforms	Quartet allowed the EU to sit on the same table with the US, UN and Russia; the UfM allowed the EU to negotiate with the Middle Eastern partners thereby creating leverage for itself against global/regional actors.

Institutional measures: the strategy of delegation

Institutional mitigation measures involve such strategies or practices as “the (informal) delegation of responsibilities to EU institutions or core groups of member states for the formulation, operationalisation or implementation of EUFSP” (Alcaro and Dijkstra 2024, this Special Issue). Delegation is especially helpful in working around intra-EU divisions, in that member governments create a degree of separation between themselves and a specific policy or set of policies that may be controversial domestically. The sensitivity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for several EU governments has often led them to allow EU institutions to take a more prominent role in executing parts of a strategy – the promotion of a two-state solution – that has become increasingly unpopular across the Union.

EU member states have relied on and increased the Union’s institutional presence on the ground. The EU has institutionalised its relations with the conflicting parties under its Neighbourhood Policy. Creating a stable environment in its neighbourhood, including the Middle East, has been a staple of the EU’s official rhetoric which is also enshrined in the Lisbon Treaty (Article 8). A European Commission Delegation was established in Tel Aviv in 1981. Later, an Office of the EU Representative for the West Bank and Gaza Strip was created with the mandate since 1994 to contribute to the MEPP based on the two-state solution. A representation of the European Commission Humanitarian Aid Department (ECHO) organises aid to the Palestinians (EUEAS 2023). In addition, and most concretely, EU member states have delegated responsibility to EUFSP operational mechanisms and two civilian CSDP missions (EUBAM-Rafah and EUPOL-COPPS) have been active in Palestine for over 20 years.

In other words, the EU has been a party to the conflict through its civilian operations under its CSDP, as member states have delegated EUFSP institutions, EUBAM-Rafah and EUPOL-COPPS responsibility for contributing to conflict management and resolution. The first mission was launched in 2005, after Israel’s unilateral disengagement from Gaza resulted in an agreement between Israel and Palestine on movement and access at border crossing points with Gaza. As envisaged in the agreement and by invitations from both sides, the EU established its civilian Border Assistance Mission for the Rafah Crossing Point (EUBAM-Rafah) as a third party to monitor the crossings and support Palestinian border administration’s capacity-building (Council of the European Union 2005a).

The EU launched its second operation in January 2006 to assist and improve Palestine’s civil police reform. In areas of the West Bank where the Palestinian civil police could operate, the EU established its police mission, officially named the EU Coordinating Office for Palestinian Police Support (EUPOL-COPPS). According to the original mandate, the EU would assist the Palestinian Civil Police (PCP) by “advising and closely monitoring”, “coordinating and facilitating EU and Member State assistance, and where requested, international assistance to PCP” (Article 1) (Council of the European Union 2005b). In 2008, the EU added a rule of law dimension (Council of the European Union 2008). In the most current version, in addition to its task of assisting the PCP, the EUPOL-COPSS has been made responsible for advising and mentoring the personnel at the “Criminal Justice institutions and the Palestinian Bar Association in the implementation of the Justice Sector Strategy” (Council of the European Union 2014).

EU border monitoring and police training missions are ways of mitigating internal contestation, since those operations are launched by consensus among member states who set their diverging interests aside. Moreover, this strategy of delegation via CSDP operations potentially results in the mitigation of regional fragmentations as their primary aim is state-building in Palestine.

However, the overall weakness of the EU’s high-level diplomatic engagement has limited the effectiveness of such missions. The mandate of the EUBAM Rafah mission has been constantly adapted to changing, and worsening, circumstances. EUBAM was first tasked with monitoring, verifying and evaluating Palestine’s border management governance, and for a time it performed its functions diligently. Until the mission suspended its operations at the Rafah Crossing Point (RCP) after Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, around 450,000 people used the crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt securely under EUBAM’s supervision and guidance. In the following years, EUBAM-Rafah continued to work on its other task, namely providing assistance to all aspects of border management at Rafah, even after the RCP was closed. It did so specifically by mentoring and training the Palestinian General Administration for Borders and Crossings (PGABC) staff (EUBAM 2018).

More recently, EUBAM Rafah has been engaged in training activities to build-up the PGABC’s capacity in order to equip personnel with the knowledge of state-of-the art technologies and other skills to increase their readiness to operate when the crossing is reopened in the future (EUBAM-Rafah 2018). In doing so, EUBAM Rafah mission officials have worked in cooperation with the PGABC of Palestine, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) of Israel and the Egyptian authorities (EUBAM-Rafah 2023). Currently, the Mission, which is operational until 30 June 2024 (subject to renewal), stands ready for redeployment at the RCP, but this is unlikely to happen unless the EU changes its policy of no-contact with Hamas, which retains control of the Gaza Strip (Pace and Pallister-Wilkins 2016). In other words, EUBAM Rafah officially exists “on the pretext of maintaining minimum operations capability” and “fell victim to Middle East politics” (Nasr El-Din 2017, 2).

Similarly, EUPOL-COPPS has been only modestly successful. In terms of strengths, the mission has provided and coordinated assistance to the PCP (Isleyen 2018, 332). EUPOL-COPPS has also trained and mentored judges, prosecutors and PCP officers, especially in “crime investigation and crime statistics, information and intelligence sharing as well as forensic investigation methods” (Ibid). Palestinian police have also received limited training on how to handle protests (Kristoff 2012). However, this has not prevented Palestinian police from using excessive – even lethal – force against the population (Isleyen 2018, 326). The EU has failed to break the tradition of coercion in Palestine’s security forces and this has resulted in a lack of public trust in the PA and the EU alike (Kristoff 2012). To be sure, intra-Palestinian divisions have hindered the EU’s ability to act. Since the mission’s actions were limited mostly to the West Bank and did not include the Gaza Strip, the aim of ensuring the security of the Palestinian people was always somewhat unattainable.

In theory – if not in practice – the EUBAM Rafah and EUPOL-COPPS mostly aim at supporting Palestine’s state-building efforts as part of a broader conflict resolution effort. However, neither operation has been successful in overcoming the fragmentation of the PA as well as the EU’s internal divisions over the broader political aims of EUFSP towards Israel and Palestine, thus their potential for bringing about positive change has been much reduced.

Diplomatic/coalitional measures: the strategy of multilateralisation

As stated by Alcaro and Dijkstra (2024, this Special Issue) diplomatic/coalitional measures, “involve steps taken by the EU and its member states to involve external actors, thereby expanding the number of like-minded actors […] to increase their leverage over competitors”. The EU’s involvement in the Quartet was a multilateralisation strategy to mitigate multipolar competition. The Middle East Quartet, established in 2002, was supposed to coordinate international assistance to the Palestinians as well as promote peace mediation. With its participation in the Quartet, the EU aimed at reconciliating the divergent policies of the US, Russia and the UN by participating in the same forum and keeping dialogue channels open, thereby creating some leverage for itself.

As part of the Quartet, the EU has continued to back the two-state solution. Support for this was reiterated at the Middle East Peace Conference of January 2017, a multilateral platform launched by France and attended by the EU (as part of the Quartet) and a total of 70 countries and international organisations. The participants in this multilateral platform, “call[ed] upon both sides to officially restate their commitment to the two-state solution, thus disassociating themselves from voices that reject this solution” and asked the parties to start direct bilateral talks (Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs-France 2017). The failure of this platform, combined with developments on the ground, have failed to encourage the EU or its member states to revise their position on the resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict, even as the two-state solution was becoming more a mirage than an aspiration.

The Quartet proved to be inefficient and less meaningful for the EU, “since the Europeans soon came to realise, the relevance of this platform for Washington has varied greatly according to specific US needs” (Möckli 2010, 67). It was mainly the US that defined the Quartet’s main principles and policies (Altunisik 2008), with the EU reduced to implementer of decisions that it did not initiate at best or a second-grade participant at worst. For instance, the EU isolated Hamas as a commitment to the principles set by the Quartet, even though this was not the EU’s policy at the outset (Gunning 2010). Nevertheless, the Quartet became a platform in which the US and the EU discussed the Israeli-Palestinian issue and managed their bilateral affairs instead of focusing on conflict resolution (Möckli 2010, 67-8). Moreover, the US sidelined not only the Quartet but also the UN and international law in general.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the Quartet became totally irrelevant not only for the EU, but also for the US and the MEPP. Instead, France and Germany took part in a ‘Munich format’ alongside Egypt and Jordan in an attempt to move the two-state solution forward. Although this is not an EU-driven or EU-represented process, the fact that the largest countries of the EU (France and Germany) meet key regional stakeholders (Egypt and Jordan) to discuss the two-state solution (the guiding principle of EU policy towards the MEPP) attests to a lingering ability of the EU to remain engaged in the issue.

Since 2008, the EU is also part of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) and its forerunner, the Barcelona Process (since 1995), both of which cover the Euro-Mediterranean area as a whole and explicitly include the aim of a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestine conflict based on a two-state model (Açıkmeşe 2005; Bauer and Hanelt 2010, 115). The Barcelona Process and UfM provided a platform in which the EU had the opportunity to talk to its Middle Eastern partners, thereby creating leverage for itself through this regional multilateral mechanism.

In sum, the EU has initiated and taken part in multilateral platforms in order to mitigate the contextual challenges facing the EUFSP in dealing with the Israel-Palestine conflict. However, the EU achieved little in those platforms, which succeeded solely in keeping the dialogue channels open with the regional actors and external stakeholders involved in the conflict. Overall, the EU’s diplomatic/coalitional measures have not resulted in mitigating any of the targeted contextual constraints.

Functional measures: the strategy of selective engagement

As a way to work around the challenges emanating from internal contestation (diverging interests of member states) and regional fragmentation (erosion of PA), the EU has employed a selective engagement strategy through which the Union could contribute to the alleviation of the conflict by focusing on important matters that were not directly related to the negotiation of a final settlement. Instead of insisting on high politics with the (unattainable and unrealistic) two-state solution, the EU has focused on low politics issues by cherry-picking from the EUFSP’s toolkit. As such, the EU has focused on its trade ties with both actors and provided humanitarian aid to Palestinians as well as state-building support to Palestinian authorities.

The EU conducts bilateral relations with both sides of the conflict, currently under the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). The EU-Israel Association Agreement, signed in 1995 and entered into force in 2000, aimed at securing “regular political dialogue, on freedom of establishment and liberalisation of services, the free movement of capital and competition rules and the strengthening of economic and social cooperation” (Delegation of the European Union to the State of Israel 2021). Moreover, the Action Plan with Israel as part of the EU’s Neighbourhood Policy in 2005 aimed at integrating Israel further into the EU market and policies (Israel, for instance, takes part in the EU’s Horizon Programme, which funds research across the 27 member states) (DG NEAR 2023b). The EU-Palestine partnership is based on the Interim Association Agreement on Trade and Cooperation, signed in 1997 between the European Community and the Palestine Liberation Organisation on behalf of the PA. The EU-Palestine Action Plan under the ENP, approved in May 2013, has recently been extended for an additional three years until 2025 (DG NEAR 2023a). In terms of commercial ties, the EU is Israel’s largest trade market and Israel was ranked 24^th among EU trade partners in 2021. In 2022, total EU-Israel trade amounted to 36.9 billion euros (12.6 billion in imports and 24.2 billion in exports) (European Commission 2022b). By contrast, Palestine’s trade with the EU is very limited. Palestine was the EU’s 151^st trade partner in 2020, with total trade amounting to just 244 million euros. EU imports from Palestine are negligible, at 26 million euros in 2020, consisting of agricultural and raw products (DG NEAR 2023a).

According to EU data, just before the 7 October tragedy, 2.1 million Palestinian people out of 5.3 million required humanitarian assistance (European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations 2023a), as poverty, unemployment, limited access to water, food, education, electricity, healthcare and housing, as well as demolitions and evictions of people from Israel’s settlements affected the Palestinian population at large (SIDA 2022). With Israel’s current war against Hamas and the deterioration of humanitarian conditions in Gaza and the West Bank, 3.1 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (2.2 million in Gaza and 900,000 in the West Bank), according to November 2023 data (European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations 2023b). Being the world’s leading donor of external aid, the EU takes responsibility for assisting the Palestinians in creating better living conditions as well as supporting their state-building efforts.

In almost all official EU documents on Palestine as well as in academic and policy sources, the fact that the EU is the biggest provider of external assistance to the Palestinians is constantly and strongly emphasised. Between 2017-20, EU funding under the European Neighbourhood Instrument (ENI), the main financial tool for Palestine, amounted to 1.28 billion euros (DG NEAR 2023a). The EU plans to provide up to 1.152 billion euros from 2021 to 2024 under the ENI’s successor, the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument (NDICI) (The Office of the European Union Representative 2022). Through the ENI and the NDICI, the EU will continue providing direct financial support, which includes the payment of salaries and pensions of civil servants to the PA in the West Bank, assistance to the most vulnerable Palestinian families and East Jerusalem hospitals, as well as the purchase of COVID-19 vaccines. The Union also supports Palestinian refugees for health, education and social services, including salaries for teachers, doctors and social workers active in refugee camps, and provides aid for development programmes that mainly focus on job creation and access to water and energy (DG NEAR 2023b). Moreover, the European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO) has been providing humanitarian aid to Palestine since 2000 in close coordination with local and regional international actors (The Office of the European Union Representative 2022). Until the tragic events following the Hamas terror attack, the EU had provided more than 852 million euros of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including 25 million euros in 2022 alone (European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations 2023a). Amidst the notable deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Gaza and the West Bank since 7 October 2023, characterised by a critical shortage of essentials such as water, food, medicine, electricity and fuel, the EU has significantly bolstered its humanitarian assistance. In 2023, the EU allocated more than 102 million euros, with an additional 125 million euros earmarked for 2024. This brings the total EU humanitarian aid commitment to 1.08 billion euros since 2000 (European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations 2023b). Moreover, the EU initiated a Humanitarian Air Bridge operation to aid those affected by the crisis in the region (in 2023 after the 7 October attack) comprising 31 flights that have transported over 1070 tonnes of humanitarian cargo from various sources, including member states and EU-owned stockpiles (European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations 2023b).

EU financial support for Palestinians for state-building and humanitarian reasons has been the EU policy with the greatest impact on the ground. However, EU aid has not been matched by political engagement and support from EU capitals (International Crisis Group 2022). In short, the EU has relieved Israel of the costs of its expansionist policies and control over Palestinian lands, despite the fact that, according to international law, such responsibility should fall on Israel’s shoulders as the occupying country.

In parallel, the cancellation of elections in the PA, rule of law failures, human rights abuses and lack of good governance in Palestine have compelled the EU to consider applying conditionality to its aid policy in all fields. However, this has not happened since the EU is reluctant to punish the Palestinian people. Consequently, as much as EU member states have failed to generate consensus to act against Israeli violence and settlement policy with one voice, they have also been too divided to blame Palestine for anti-democratic practices.

The EU’s trade links with both actors, specifically with Israel, and its aid policy towards Palestinians, have not helped attain a desired political solution – in fact, the opposite has been the case. The fragmentation of the Palestinian political landscape as well as Israel’s expansionist policies have undermined the long-term viability of a two-state solution. Because of its internal divisions, with several member states following a pro-Israeli line, the EU’s functional strategies of selective engagement could not be sustained with a broader and stronger push for conflict resolution.

Conclusion

In its efforts to manage the complex contextual constraints relating to the Israel-Palestine conflict, the EU has employed a range of mitigation strategies: a strategy of delegation as an institutional measure through its CSDP missions; a strategy of multilateralisation as a diplomatic/coalitional measure through its participation in the Quartet and other multilateral platforms; and a strategy of selective engagement as a functional measure through its trade ties with both actors and humanitarian aid policies. However, none of these mitigation strategies have been sufficient to alleviate the impact of internal contestation, regional fragmentation and multipolar competition on the conflict. A glaring example of their inadequacy has been the recent conflagration in Gaza, a highly visible and stark reminder of the limitations of the EU's diplomatic/coalitional, functional and institutional approaches in effectively addressing and ameliorating complex challenges arising from contestation, fragmentation and competition. As long as Israel continues its illegal annexations and settlement policies as well as its displacement of Palestinians (Baconi 2020), and Palestinian politics remains divided, alongside rule of law failures, human rights abuses and lack of good governance in Palestine, there is not much scope for EUFSP in the region. Moreover, the US’s firm support for Israel, sidelining the UN Resolutions, international law and other multilateral attempts, leaves little to no leeway for the EU to mitigate the impact of multipolar rivalries. In fact, there are EU member states that follow the path of the US and maintain close relations with Israel rather than devoting their energy to peace and conflict resolution. Since the Netanyahu government rejects the two-state solution, EU member states siding unconditionally with the Israeli government contribute to undermining the feasibility of such a solution.

Thus, the Israel-Palestine case clearly shows the limits of the EUFSP’s effectiveness. At present, it is highly unlikely that the EUFSP will become more effective, since the macro-level objective of a two-state solution cannot be attained, mostly because of intra-regional sensitivities, divergences and violent clashes, especially after the tragic events of 7 October, as well as Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestinian lands with US protection. EU difficulties will probably continue, since for both political and historical reasons member states are unlikely to agree on a common policy that all would abide by or consistently implement. A fundamental problem emanates from the EU’s insistence on attempting to devise policies as if the two-state solution were still a realistic prospect. It is not. The rightward drift in Israeli politics makes it highly unlikely that a peace process could be rekindled – in fact, it had been de facto defunct for years already. The continuous and unresisted expansion of settlements in occupied territories effectively annul the prospects of a two-state solution.

Under these circumstances, until 7 October, the debate grew on what was considered to be a more realistic approach that suggested a policy predicated on the reality of a “one state moment” (Barnett et al. 2023). The psychological as well as security climate that arose in the wake of the 7 October atrocities, Israel’s disproportionate response and the toll of civilian deaths, however, have rendered that option moot for the relevant future. Yet, it might still be prudent for the EU and its member states to pay attention to the growing body of literature and debates on the ‘One State Reality’, and the possible political formats – such as a confederation – for a solution to finally bring the world’s longest territorial and nationalist conflict to an end.

Acknowledgments

This article draws on a paper by Sinem Akgül-Açıkmeşe et al. titled “Stalled by Division: EU Internal Contestation Over the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”, published by the Horizon 2020 JOINT project. The authors of this article would like to thank their co-authors Kristina Kausch and Eduard Soler i Lecha for their valuable contributions to that paper as well as Ricardo Alcaro for his reviews. The authors are also grateful to Mr. Erman Ermihan and Mr. Tuna Korkmaz for their research assistance. JOINT has received funding from the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement N. 959143 (www.jointproject.eu). This publication reflects only the view of the authors and the European Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sinem Akgül-Açıkmeşe

Sinem Akgül-Açıkmeşe is Professor of International Relations at Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkey. Email: [email protected]

Soli Özel

Soli Özel is a Lecturer in the Department of International Relations at Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkey. Email: [email protected]