At January's annual EU Ambassadors’ Conference, both the president of the EU Commission Ursula von der Leyen and EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas made the usual reference to the “two-state solution” as they mentioned the Middle East.
Yet the EU has consistently undermined the two-state solution and fuelled the conflict in Israel/occupied Palestinian territory.
Instead of acting on recommendations to change course, the EU leadership has possibly even paved the way for another solution: a mass deportation of Palestinians to Egypt and Jordan, flagged by US president Donald Trump as a “clean out” plan, as detailed during his press conference with Israel’s prime minister Netanyahu.
'The EU is a payer, not a player’?
Contrary to this line often-heard since the author’s posting in Jerusalem, the EU has played a political role by using its political, commercial and financial levers against its own proclaimed policy objectives, in particular the ‘two-state solution’. It can still change course — but the clock is ticking.
For almost two decades, the EU has fuelled the Palestinian division, both geographically (West Bank/Gaza Strip) and politically (Fatah/Hamas). It notably disregarded the Palestinian clear majority for Hamas in the 2006 legislative elections, considered democratic by an EU Electoral Observation Mission.
Undermining a declared pillar of its foreign policy — support for democracy — the EU used its financial leverage to blindly support the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, increasingly seen as authoritarian under president Mahmoud Abbas and, as confirmed recently, with limited control over the West Bank.
Further, beyond the legal requirements regarding a terrorist organisation, the EU opted against diplomacy by a ‘no contact’ policy with Hamas. The EU used the Quartet's conditions as a one-sided diktat rather than responding to openings from Hamas leaders towards the recognition of Israel, such as Khaled Mesh'al to the former US president Jimmy Carter.
The EU thus abandoned the Gaza Strip with also little regard to its own consensus on humanitarian aid or even for security: while it claims to support Israel’s security, the EU has maintained an explosive situation leading to the 7 October attacks.
This was not for lack of warning: after Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009, recommendations to change course were not followed in Brussels.
Over the past decades, the EU also sabotaged the two-state solution by offering successive Israeli governments considerable advantages knowing that Netanyahu and others undermined the very viability of a Palestinian state: inter alia, the rejection of the Arab Peace Initiative; policies supporting Hamas and fuelling the Palestinian divide; Israeli settlements expansion in violation of international law.
The list EU supports is long, and goes beyond the EU-Israel Association Agreement: sectoral cooperation, access to European markets and funding; use of European taxpayers' money to facilitate Israel's occupation by freeing it from its obligations of an ‘occupying power’ under the Geneva Conventions.
The EU invested billions in so-called Palestinian ‘state-building’, development and humanitarian aid, reconstruction — all after destruction by Israel’s army.
Since October 2023, under von der Leyen, the EU institutions continued their ‘business as usual’ with the Netanyahu government, burying under the rubble the two-state solution and jeopardising the very existence of the Palestinian people — despite clear warnings by the International Court of Justice in the South Africa v Israel case.
Amidst the rising death toll and destruction in the Gaza Strip, but also in the West Bank, the EU Commission, for instance, greenlighted negotiations with Israel on aviation security; renewed its agreement to the transfer of personal data to Israel — welcomed by Israeli authorities; offered additional funding to ‘reinforce EU-Israel bilateral relations’ precisely when Israel further invested in illegal settlements.
The EU leadership also flagged that Israel could count on European taxpayers’ money for Gaza's reconstruction, de facto encouraging further destruction.
Will Kallas' position on the situation in Ukraine also apply to the Middle East and elsewhere?
"If aggression pays off somewhere, it serves as an invitation to use it elsewhere. That is our worry", she told the European Parliament during her hearing in November 2024.
The EU leadership can continue to selectively apply and therefore undermine international law, or use the EU’s leverage to uphold the EU Treaty obligation of "strict respect (...) for international law" and implement the September 2024 UN General Assembly resolution demanding that Israel’s presence in occupied Palestinian territory, deemed “unlawful” by the International Court of Justice, ends within a year.
The EU leadership can continue to blindly follow the US and give in to Netanyahu, a trend in EU policymaking, and be complicit to war crimes and crimes against humanity such as a mass deportation.
Or it can rally all EU member states behind a new approach and use its leverage to effectively implement the two-state solution, or other creative and just options — with a vision of dynamics in the wider Middle East.
The EU could also engage with other players.
For instance, China guaranteed an agreement negotiated between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and recently welcomed 14 Palestinian factions, including Fatah and Hamas, to sign the Beijing Declaration on Ending Division and Strengthening Palestinian National Unity.
Overall, the EU leadership could finally respond to the appeal by Rachel Goldberg-Polin, the mother of Israeli hostage Hersh. At a press conference in Geneva in December 2023, Rachel shared a poem for a mother in Gaza and the following message:
"We are at a crossroads, and when I say we, I don't mean we Jews, Muslims or Christians, Americans, Palestinians, Europeans, Israelis, Ukrainians, Russians. I mean we humans. We can keep dividing the world into the paradigm of them versus us or we can start thinking about those who are willing and those who are not willing."
In Rachel’s words: “All over the world, we have got to learn to live together or all over the world we are going to die together.“
Amidst rising tensions globally and within societies, and other existential threats, the time is now for the EU leadership to stop undermining the rule of law, the very foundation of the European project.
The time is now for the EU’s leverage to serve the aspirations of all in the Middle East. The clock is ticking.
Jérôme Bellion-Jourdan is a senior fellow at the Zurich-based Institute for Global Negotiation. The views expressed in this piece are of the author and not the IGN as whole. He served the European Commission in Cairo and Jerusalem, and as an EU diplomat in Geneva leading in UN negotiations on a range of issues including the Middle East. Bellion-Jourdan holds a PhD in Political Science from Sciences Po Paris.
Jérôme Bellion-Jourdan is a senior fellow at the Zurich-based Institute for Global Negotiation. The views expressed in this piece are of the author and not the IGN as whole. He served the European Commission in Cairo and Jerusalem, and as an EU diplomat in Geneva leading in UN negotiations on a range of issues including the Middle East. Bellion-Jourdan holds a PhD in Political Science from Sciences Po Paris.