07 June 2021 12:48
At the end of April, the US NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) published the report A threshold crossed (The threshold crossed) in which he denounced the violations of Palestinian rights committed by Israel, which would be classified as a crime of apartheid, according to the definition given by the International Criminal Court (ICC). A month later the New York Times, publishing an article titled “They Were Just Children” accompanied by photos of 67 Palestinian children and teenagers killed by Israeli raids on the Gaza Strip and two Israeli children killed by Hamas rockets, crossed a new threshold in the Israeli-Palestinian media war.
For the first time, the big US newspaper changed its perspective and showed that “Palestinian lives matter”. Today, even at the Washington Congress, progressive parliamentarians are demanding more fairness on this issue. Five hundred people who work on the Democratic Party staff and participated in Joe Biden’s election campaign sent a letter to the president asking him for a “more balanced approach” to the issue. According to Middle East expert HA Hellyer, of the Carnegie study center, “the question to ask is not whether US policies will change, but when.”
In Europe, however, the coverage of the conflict seems to have remained the same as it was twenty years ago. What is happening to Europe, which has always been a champion of international and humanitarian law, which today seems to be complicit in serious violations in this field? The question has been asked on several occasions in Europe and in particular it was discussed in a seminar that took place online on 31 May 2021 entitled History in the making. Existence, violence and expectations in Palestine and Israel, organized by three European research centers: the International Business Institute of Rome, the European University Institute of Florence and Sciences Po of Paris.
Disconnected from reality
Amjad Iraqi lives in Haifa and writes for the Israeli website +972 Magazine. As a Palestinian citizen of Israel, he smiles before commenting on the European position: “Europe needs to understand where the conversation on the ground has come. He has to update his files. Here nobody talks about the two-state solution anymore. It is clear to everyone that there is now a single state, Israel, with gods in the middle bantustan for the Palestinians “. It is almost comical, Iraqi notes, to see Europeans strive to sweeten the speeches of the Israeli right or far right, justifying actions that some Israelis practice without the slightest embarrassment. Iraqi continues: “If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says: ‘I support the annexation of the West Bank’, the Europeans translate: ‘Oh no, in reality he still supports the two-state solution’. If the Israeli government says: ‘We have passed a law on the Jewish nation-state under which Jews have more rights’, the European Union translates: ‘Israel is a democracy that offers equal rights to its citizens’. Europeans must stop always justifying Israel in this way! ”.
From Gaza, the journalist Muhammad Shehada explains how the calls of the international community not to exacerbate the conflict are perceived as hypocrites by the inhabitants of the Strip. For years the Palestinians in Gaza have tried to play the card of non-violence: just remember the enormous peaceful mobilization of the return march in the years 2018 and 2019, which according to the UN, cost the lives of 214 Palestinians, while others 36,100 were injured. “With the return march”, Shehada explains, “we thought we would win the favor of the international community. What happened instead? A deafening silence, while many young people were killed or maimed for life. If you take a trip to Gaza, you can see many young people who have lost an arm or a leg because they demonstrated peacefully ”.
There are two European diplomatic representations: one in Tel Aviv to speak with Israel, one in Jerusalem to speak with the Palestinians
According to Inès Abdel Razek, campaign manager of the Palestinian Institute for Public Diplomacy, in a context of international abandonment, the European Union is considered irrelevant, because “stuck in the maze of a ‘peace process’ that has only led to the bureaucratization of ‘Palestinian Authority and ended up creating committees upon committees, based on false assumptions ”. There are always two European diplomatic representations: one in Tel Aviv to speak with Israel, one in Jerusalem to speak with the Palestinians. Europeans still pretend that there are two states, two parties. Today, Razek points out, “the picture has totally changed due to the Israeli annexations. Only Europeans continue to talk about the ‘two states’ in the negotiations. Instead, there is no longer a conflict to negotiate, but a colonial apartheid situation. What we need to discuss are rights ”.
The evolution of the European position
This European position “far from reality”, explains in an interview Daniela Huber, head of the Mediterranean and Middle East Program of the Institute of International Affairs and author of The international dimension of the Israel-palestinian conflict (the international dimension of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), was not always like this: “Before the Oslo accords, the European community made up of twelve members strongly contested the US approach: it spoke of the right to self-determination and illegal settlements”. For Huber, the change came in the 1990s when the United States included Europeans in the Oslo process. Europe then began to change vocabulary. The settlements were no longer “illegal” but “illegitimate”.
If in the 1980s European leaders promoted dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), considered a terrorist organization by the Americans, they then aligned themselves with Washington’s positions not to speak with Hamas, which they began to define as a terrorist group. On the issue of self-determination, they found themselves with an equation that is impossible to solve, explains Huber: “The two-state solution implies the right to self-determination, which, however, is impossible to implement in a situation where there is an occupant and a busy person “.
The European repositioning, Huber explains, came at a time when the international order was dominated by the United States: in an expanding European Union, the American position agreed everyone. Historically this attitude has provided “a cover” rather than a solution to the conflict.
Inability or complicity
Now this same coverage comes directly from Europe. Is it a reflection of a Union “paralyzed by its internal divisions,” writes Le Monde, and under pressure from the growing number of far-right leaders, such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, who has forged a strong alliance with Netanyahu? In addition to this, an even more worrying element are the British and German declarations against the CPI – the creation of which was strongly desired by these same countries – which call into question the foundations of international humanitarian law.
In Foreign Policy, Benjamin Haddad examines in detail the reasons for this European change: “This mutation is the symbol of something deeper. In the face of terrorist attacks in recent years, Europeans have increasingly associated Israel with a country facing similar challenges. Aurore Bergé, spokesperson for the République en marche! – President Macron’s party – in the French parliament, declared: ‘We have a common front with Israel: the fight against Islamist terrorism. More than ever, this is what brings us closer and this explains the diplomatic change in Europe ”.
The latest blow at the European level was the Syrian civil war which reached its peak in 2013. The Union has since decided to fortify its borders and Middle Eastern migrants have been surrounded by “a circle of fire”, he explains. Huber.
However, the scholar sees small changes at the European level. In universities, the work of the Palestinian historian Rashid Khalidi on Israeli colonialism is increasingly studied and in European resolutions, under pressure from the Nordic countries, it is asked to go back to the “roots” of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Irish parliament passed a motion in May condemning the “de facto annexation” of the Palestinian territories by the Israeli authorities. It is the first of the 27 countries of the European Union to do so.
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