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EW BACKGROUND BRIEFING
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What the EU spends
on aid to the Palestinians
The EU has been the largest aid donor to the Palestinians since the Oslo accords of 1993, when of the $2.4bn pledged to support the peace process 38% was from the EU. The deal at that time was that the U.S. would work on a political settlement while Europe focused on aid and state-building.
The European Commission’s 2000-2009 aid commitments to the Palestinian Territories amounted to €3.41bn, not including donations by individual EU member states. For 2008, €497m was committed, and the programmes co-ordinated by the Commission total about a quarter of all assistance to the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Most EU aid is now channelled through PEGASE, a European Neighbourhood Policy instrument set up in early 2008 to support the Palestinian Authority’s reform programme. Of €440m pledged by the Commission for 2008, €325m was through PEGASE to fund direct assistance for public services and infrastructure investment.
Whether this money will reach its targets remains to be seen. In recent years, the failure of the peace process has meant EU funds have been diverted away from capacity-building to repair war-damaged infrastructure and meet basic humanitarian needs.
Relief payments already form a large part of the budget: the EU provided over half the 2008 budget of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), set-up in 1949 to help Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, as well as those in the West Bank and Gaza.
Corruption within the Palestinian Authority and the recent split between the PA and Hamas have compounded the problem, especially for the people of Gaza. Here, the EU pays the salaries of doctors, nurses and teachers, but also those of Palestinian Authority officials who have been unable to work since Hamas seized power. Money is being wasted as long as the political situation is unresolved.
An international donor conference to fund the rebuilding of Gaza held in Sharm el-Sheikh in March of last year raised $4.4bn, including €436m from the Commission. The EU says it has fulfilled its pledge but that other countries, including many Arab states, have yet to fulfill theirs.
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But more realistically we should stop asking the European Union to
emulate a nation state. Europe cannot sponsor or lead a negotiation
process between Arabs and Israelis, let alone impose a solution on
them. What Europe can do is to focus on what it is more suited for,
which is to influence the core dynamics of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Over
the last two decades, the EU’s desire to look more and more like a
nation state has guided its position on the Arab-Israeli conflict in
the wrong direction. Europe’s inability to play a political role in the
Middle East peace process was wrongly diagnosed as resulting from a
European bias towards Israel. Policy advisors argued that gaining
Israel’s trust was necessary if it was to recognise that Europe should
play a role in the peace process. Almost nothing became too dear to win
this elusive trust; technology transfers, European quotas in the United
Nations, association agreements, upgraded relations and even,
reportedly, the prospect of joining the EU.
Driven by this
irresistible desire to appear relevant, European policy revolved around
seducing Israel while at the same time bribing the Palestinian
Authority. Financing Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank
served both objectives at the same time, at a cost to European
taxpayers of several billion euros. Yet this policy earned Europe
neither recognition nor relevance. Palestinians continued to trivialise
Europe’s contribution, and Israelis to loathe it for ‘financing
Palestinian terror’. So in the end Europe paid out a lot of money just
to expose its own weakness. How much worse can things get before this
counter-productive EU policy is abandoned?
The idea that
Europe can seduce the occupier into giving it a role in ending
occupation seems wrong-headed, while trying to convince Israel that
Europe is even-handed is also a waste of time. Israel doesn't want an
even-handed mediator but an unconditional supporter. This is partly why
Israel prefers the United States as sole mediator, and it is also why
its acceptance of a monopoly role for the U.S evaporates as soon as any
American president starts developing views different from those of
Israel. When this happens, America’s inability to project power makes
all the difference. In other words, no matter what blandishments are
showered Israel, when push comes to shove it is the ability to use
power - not charm - that determines whether or not an outside power has
a say in Arab-Israeli peacemaking. Europe’s failure to play a role in
resolving this conflict does not result from imagined anti-Israeli
views but from the fact that the EU is not a state. States are not
given roles; they acquire them by the power assets they can deploy in
the service of their foreign policy. And Europe cannot deploy the type
of power needed to tilt the balance in Arab-Israeli peacemaking.
But
it can do other things. The EU can enhance its influence if it abandons
the fantasy of acting like a state and instead trades visibility for
effectiveness. Instead of being obsessed with participating at
conferences (with three representatives speaking in ‘one voice’),
Europe can if it chooses affect the dynamics at the core of
Arab-Israeli peacemaking, help the parties face their existential
challenges and still be faithful to its own principles and broader
interests in the region.
The core dynamic of Arab-Israeli
conflict is and has long been the inability of the parties to overcome
their short-term political constraints and take decisions that are
strategically sound but utterly unpopular.
The return to power
In Israel of Likud, and the failure of the Obama Administration to get
it to freeze West Bank settlements illustrate this dynamic.
Strengthening Israel’s grip on East Jerusalem and the West Bank, as
well as the Golan Heights, simply brings Israeli politicians more
votes. Advocating withdrawal from these territories, which is a sine
qua non condition for peace, drives away Israel’s voters. Palestinian
rejectionist factions thrive on this just as much as their Israeli
counterparts; so advocating concessions to Israel doesn’t win more
moderate Palestinian politicians greater popularity either. On both
sides, politicians agonise in private over the strategic concerns that
are being undermined by short-term political realities. But there is
little they can do about it; some call this leadership deficit and
others a sane political calculation.
To change this dynamic,
external players now need to influence the political calculus inside
Israel and Palestine by lowering the political cost of peace and
raising the cost of occupation and thus enabling politicians to choose
peace. Israel’s preparedness to return Palestinian territories, with
certain conditions, is the trigger for any meaningful Arab-Israeli
conflict resolution process, but no Israeli government will be willing
or even able to do that unless the political calculus inside Israel
changes. Making withdrawal a tolerable political option (or making
occupation a more costly one) is needed to start a meaningful peace
process.
Europe has already tried incentives for withdrawal,
but those incentives alone clearly will not do; the cost of occupation
must also be raised. In plain English, an ‘occupation tax’ is needed.
This would be different to applying sanctions, which in any case risk
triggering a “Masada Complex" that would push Israel to further
extremes. But a sanction targeting the tools of occupation – not Israel
as a whole but the whole settlement’s enterprise and the violation of
Palestinians’ human rights.
An ‘occupation tax’ should start
with turning the current exclusion from EU preferential customs
treatment of settlement’s products into a full-scale ban on imports
from settlements – and any transactions with them. Companies and banks
should be barred from doing business in or with settlements, and
especially with construction companies and their suppliers. At the same
time, pressure should be exerted on the government of Israel to end its
financial assistance to settlements.
The ‘occupation tax’
should also include action aimed at ending the impunity that to all
practical purposes is enjoyed by the Israel Defense Force (IDF). IDF
officials argue that some level of human rights violation is inevitable
during occupation and that the IDF record is not much worse than any
other occupation army. They are right; an occupation cannot be
sustained without the systematic violation of human rights. And this is
precisely why these violations must be made costly: to signal to
Israeli voters that the cost of occupation is bound to rise. This can
be done if Europe supports ‘first’ the investigation of suspected war
crimes and other violations by the IDF of international humanitarian
law and, second, the establishment of international tribunals when
those crimes occur.
Despite its apparent difficulties, this
sort of occupation tax would be a wise policy option for Europe, and a
blessing for Israelis and Arabs alike. It would send a clear message to
Israel’s voters that Europe; while committed to the security of Israel,
will not compromise its own standards by accommodating Israel’s
imagined need to occupy Palestinian lands. At the same time, it would
restore credibility to European claims that human rights standards are
universally applicable, and would also help those people in Israel who
are fighting for its soul and democratic ideals. An occupation tax
alone is obviously not going to bring peace, but neither is
negotiation. Both are needed and neither suffices alone.
Bringing
the two sides to a new negotiation process, or even drafting a
blueprint for a political solution, is something only the United States
can do, with support – at best – from Europe and others. Yet affecting
the internal political calculus in Israel is a task that Europe is more
fit to lead. It is a role that Europe can afford, given its unique
situation between being a constellation of states, who have shared
interests and similar constraints, and a group of nations bound by
principles and values. Such a role would better protect its broader
interests in the Middle East and allow it to remain faithful to its
values. |