Examination of Witnesses (Questions 115
- 119)
THURSDAY 8 MARCH 2007
DR RICHARD YOUNGS AND DR ROBERT SPRINGBORG
Chairman: Professor Springborg and Dr
Youngs, we are very pleased to see you both this morning. As you
know, the Committee is carrying out an inquiry into the Middle
East Peace Process and the role of the European Union, and we
have a number of questions which we would like to put to you this
morning.
Q115 Lord Hamilton of Epsom:
We want to know really what the objectives are of the EU's policy
with regard to the Middle East Peace Process and how they are
different from those of the United States.
Dr Youngs: First of all, I think the EU can
claim much credit for having influenced international debate by
setting out very clearly its support for a two-state solution
as far back as the Venice Declaration, and then in the Berlin
Declaration, I think one can argue, in the sense that the EU position
was one of the factors that influenced or pushed the US towards
an acceptance of the two-state solution. Also key to the EU philosophy
and EU objectives and something for which it can also claim credit
was an understanding that a formal peace agreement at the political
level would not be sufficient, but this needed to be underpinned
by co-operation between Israelis and Palestinians at the civil
society level, at the economic level and that the Peace Agreement
needed to be embedded in the kind of regional, co-operative security
framework of the type that had worked so well within Europe itself,
so I think that was where the nuanced difference with United States
policy came in. Supposedly, EU policy was not about direct security
assistance or backing one leader over another, but it was about
making sure that the Peace Agreement was embedded firmly within
a regional framework of co-operation.
Dr Springborg: Let me state at the outset that
I see my presence as someone who has worked in Palestine on the
ground and, to some extent, in Israel, having sort of viewed things
from the bottom-up, whereas my colleague Richard Youngs is a top-down
strategist, so I will carefully choose which questions I respond
to or you would quickly discover I do not know as much as I claim
to know, so I will keep off that question.
Q116 Lord Hamilton of Epsom:
That is slightly historical as to the influence that the EU has
had in the past. How do they digress now or do they not, the American
and EU policies?
Dr Youngs: In terms of large principles, perhaps
there is not so much digression. I think the difference is one
more of nuance in terms of where the EU has put its emphasis.
I think the EU's strong point has been to try and build up an
on-the-ground presence, to try and build links between the Israelis
and the Palestinians, to work on social, cultural and economic
co-operation, and the basic philosophy that underlay the creation
of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership was that the EU in that
way could provide a kind of secondary back-up to the high-level
politics of Middle East diplomacy. I think that model has not
worked well. I do not think that it was in itself a badly designed
model, the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership and the association
agreements, but I do think the lesson of the last decade has been
that that kind of focus on low politics, a kind of technocratic
back-up to high-level diplomacy, can only work if it is conceived
as part of a broader, political engagement which does at least
enable some of the final settlement issues to be broached.
Q117 Lord Crickhowell:
I noticed that one of the papers that you produced is entitled,
"Europe's Uncertain Pursuit of Middle East Reform" back
in 2004. We have heard a lot of evidence about the unhappy state
of the road map which has been described with various strong adjectives.
The suggestion has been made very strongly by a number of witnesses
that Europe is in a position, because of its massive trading relationship
with Israel and elsewhere, because of economic factors and because
it is seen as less perhaps biased and more neutral in its approach
to the various parties, of being able to take a much more active
and perhaps stronger role in trying to influence the political
policies that you referred to. Do you think that is so and would
you feel that Europe could, or should, take a really much more
active political role in trying to get the whole process moving
further on?
Dr Youngs: I think there is no doubt that one
of the shortcomings of EU policy has been that the EU has failed
to use its economic leverage and its on-the-ground presence it
has built up through various aid initiatives as a leverage to
try and nudge progress on the bigger final settlement issues.
I think we have to be realistic in terms of our expectations of
what the EU can achieve at that political level on its own, but
I do think it should be using its on-the-ground presence to have
a more positive impact at the political level. It is often pointed
out that the road map itself was essentially a European creation,
a mixture of Danish and German ideas, and that, when that road
map was being drawn up, the UK itself was trying to use its influence
to encourage a more proactive and balanced engagement from the
Bush Administration. Therefore, there has been some political-level
engagement, but I think in general the EU has been too willing
to accept that its role is to build up this incremental, on-the-ground
presence as a support for progress at the political level and
has not really made the link between its low politics presence
and progress at the political level. Obviously the EU cannot seek
to play a high political role in opposition to the main diplomatic
players in the conflict, but I do think that it could at least
begin to put forward some ideas of how one can build on the valuable
aspects of the road map to try and complement the incremental
or sequential approach of the road map with a situation where
one can broach, and talk about, final settlement issues. I do
think the area where the EU perhaps has the most credibility,
the most leverage, has been on the issue of Palestinian institutional
reform. I think this is where the EU had begun to make some headway
and had begun to play a relatively lead role and exerts an influence
over issues which are of day-to-day relevance to Palestinian citizens.
I think one of the big disappointments of events over the last
year is that it is precisely this institutional reform agenda
that has suffered most from the boycott imposed last year and
I think the EU has thrown away a lot of the leverage that it had
begun to build up, so, if we are now about to enter into a new
situation with the formation of the Unity Government, I would
argue that this is one of the priority areas where the EU should
look for ways to try and re-engage with the new Government.
Q118 Lord Tomlinson:
If I can move on to the second question, but pick up one or two
of the points you have just raised, if the EU are going to engage
with the new Unity Government, are you suggesting that that should
be done unconditionally or are there any criticisms you would
make of the conditions that the EU currently lay down for such
participation? Going on to the main thrust of that second question,
in terms of a coherent strategy for the European Union in relation
to the Middle East Peace Process, I suppose it is quite frequently
characterised that the EU are quite competent to pick up the bills
and sign the cheques for the flanking measures, but what are the
specific areas of political engagement that you think we are failing
to make and could usefully make which would not engage us in a
major falling-out of strategic policy with the United States itself?
Dr Youngs: I would try to put the stress on
the conditions that would help sustain peace over the longer term,
and I think that is where you can add value politically to the
plethora of initiatives afforded by other international actors.
Q119 Lord Tomlinson:
Yes, but that is in the long run. In the long run, we are all
short. We have to get to peace before we can have all the measures
to support the Peace Process, so are there political initiatives
that we, as a result of our economic muscle in terms of the flanking
measures, ought to be taking and are they in contradiction to
any of the American initiatives?
Dr Youngs: I am not sure they are necessarily
in contradiction, but I think where the EU can add value is precisely
through this institutional reform agenda. It is where it does
have some history of success and I think the issue with the three
conditions which were imposed on Hamas is not that they were unreasonable
conditions in themselves, but the danger is that that chokes off
the possibility of dialogue and co-operation on these longer-term
reform issues in a way that actually militates against the prospects
for peace over the longer term. The risk is that, through putting
all the emphasis on these three other conditions, the focus is
taken off concerns over issues of governance standards and accountability
within the Occupied Territories that probably are of greater day-to-day
concern to citizens. They are issues that, even in the short term,
do feed into people's concerns, do generate instability and that
feeds in in a negative way to the Peace Process, so I think it
is important to retain the conditions, but to try to press for
their fulfilment in a way that does not choke off the prospect
of co-operating on this longer-term institutional reform agenda.
In fact, I think that the desirability of moving back towards
an engagement on those kinds of issues is recognised. There are
many EU voices expressing the desirability of beginning work again
on these reform issues and there is lots of talk about broadening
out the Temporary International Mechanism, about reactivating
security sector reform work through the TIM, of trying to use
initiatives like twinning, like co-operation on regulatory issues,
the kinds of issues and instruments that the EU has used with
success in other parts of the world, in the Occupied Territories
on the back of the Unity Government, and I think that is the kind
of area where the EU should begin to work much more proactively.
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