Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140
- 151)
THURSDAY 8 MARCH 2007
DR RICHARD YOUNGS AND DR ROBERT SPRINGBORG
Q140 Lord Crickhowell:
We have covered a great deal of which instruments have made the
most significant contribution. We have dealt pretty thoroughly
with what the EU can usefully do to assist in the reform and capacity
building of the Palestinian Administration. Unless you both want
to add anything on those points it does take us back to where
we started. Is the EU addressing the roots of the problem and
is there not a brokerage role of the more important political
kind that could be used at this particular moment. Is there any
addition to the points already made fairly extensively that you
would like to add or have we covered it all?
Dr Youngs: I would only add a very short observation.
It is generally recognised that although we have argued that greater
focus needs to be placed on the longer term issues, the temporary
international mechanism has been a success in that it did co-ordinate
Member State's funding in quite a quid ad hoc way. It contravened
or circumvented some of the standard intra-EU bureaucracies and
delays. It is being talked about as a possible model that could
be extended to other conflict situations. Of course it is a sticking
plaster on the problem and again, as we move forward to a new
situation now, there is a need to broaden that mechanism but,
at the same time, there are familiar concerns over the dependency
on aid of the occupied territories and the need gradually to move
back towards a situation where most of the help is focused on
trying to help self-sustaining economic regeneration and a move
away from the kind of short-term service provision.
Q141 Lord Crickhowell:
There cannot be any possibility of sustaining economic activity
in a totally fragmented Palestine where the border crossings are
impossible, people cannot travel from A to B, and where economic
life is effectively interrupted at almost every point by the activities
of Israel. Is there any possibility, unless you move on to a political
settlement, for any kind of effective economic activity?
Dr Youngs: No. It comes back to the point again
of why it is so important for the EU to try and use the regional
frameworks it has set up and operated for over a decade to try
and gain some of that leverage and understand that a sustainable
peace process has to be understood within a regional framework.
One issue is the neighbourhood policy. There are new instruments
available both at the bilateral level to try and provide inducements
and incentives for neighbourhood partners to try and co-operate
on those issues situated within the overarching framework of the
Barcelona process, and the combination of those two sets of instruments
should, in theory, give the EU greater leverage to try and address
some of those shortcomings that we have talked about.
Dr Springborg: Could I just add a comment on
the economy. It is interesting that the Palestinian economy has
become U-shaped, with a large number of firms constituted by one
or two individuals and then large monopoly firms. The vital middle,
the small and medium enterprise sector, which in most other Arab
countries is growing and growing rapidly enough to begin to think
about shrinking civil services because of the labour absorption
capacity of this relatively vibrant middle part of the private
sector, is completely missing in Palestine. This is a very good
indicator of the problems that you are alluding to. The little
firms cannot grow and the big ones are merely parasitic monopolies.
What should be the emerging Palestinian private sector economy
in the middle, which would be the basis for a sustainable state
and presumably for the moderate attitudes that would make peacemaking
much more acceptable and successful, is all missing. The closures,
the interruptions, all the rest of it, have a very serious negative
consequence for the Palestinian economy.
As far as the broader question of what
are the roots of the problem for the EU, it seems to me that the
complete separation that exists between high policy and on the
ground policy is one that is unnatural and counter-productive
to the interests of the organisation. I witness it from the ground
where development professionals who are engaged feel that the
policy makers of the EU, or of the Member States of the EU, or
of the United States for that matter, simply are not attending
to what the consequences of these high policies are for what is
nominally policy for state building. In the absence of any sort
of serious connection between the requirements of state building,
on the one hand, and diplomacy, on the other, then state building
always comes off second best. The voice of those engaged in state
building has been cut out of the United States' decision making,
it has been cut out of EU decision making and it has been cut
out of British decision making. One only pleads here for the responsiveness
of the various countries and their decision makers involved to
listen to their own people on the ground and the consequences
that high policy has for the economy, for the polity and for the
society. That voice does not get through even within government
itself, to say nothing of the world beyond.
Q142 Lord Anderson of Swansea:
It is obviously difficult for external donors to encourage SMEs
but do you think anything is being done on the ground in that
respect?
Dr Springborg: Very little is being done to
help the economy now because the broader political setting is
not conducive to it. I am not familiar with any particular activities
going on with them at the present time. There could be but they
have escaped my attention. What has happened is the World Bank
supported a region-wide economic organisation headquartered in
Cairo and its particular self-assumed mission has, for several
years now, been to encourage appropriate policy frameworks for
the emergence of SMEs. They have engaged with Palestinians, and
so on, with what consequence I cannot tell you, but it is clearly
an area where more work should be done.
Q143 Lord Anderson of Swansea:
I have been looking at the fertility rates in Gaza, on the West
Bank, and comparing these with the Israeli Arabs, and the figures
are pretty alarming in terms of Gaza, which I think would amount
to a doubling of the population in 25 years. Obviously that would
have an effect not only on the economy but on education, health
and so on. Is there resistance among the Palestinians to any attempt
to influence population policy?
Dr Springborg: I am not aware of any active
resistance. I recall some statements by Arafat to the effect not
populate or perish and encouraging Palestinian women to have children.
Q144 Lord Anderson of Swansea:
Win by the wombs of our mothers.
Dr Springborg: That sort of a general approach:
any attempt to control us demographically is part of the conspiracy
to deny us our land. The population growth rate in Gaza and elsewhere
can be explained also in part by virtue of the poverty of the
people living there. If we look at the other area of the Middle
East that has had an extraordinarily high growth rate, Yemen,
that is one of the poorest countries in the world. If the question
is does one want to reduce the Palestinian birth rate, then the
answer is two-fold: one, you need to have an appropriate development
programme that creates the wealth that is an inducement for reduced
family size; and, secondly, to divorce demography from land because
it is now seen as a claim on sovereignty over territory. As long
as that is the case, the Palestinians will presumably continue
to populate at a high rate.
Chairman: Can we try and keep to the
European Union questions?
Lord Anderson of Swansea: It is relevant
in the sense that the European Union could have, if it were acceptable,
some form of assistance on fertility rates and population growth.
Q145 Chairman:
We have begun to cover the questions in 10 and 11 on the impact
of the occupation and on the TIM. Could we go on to a question
on the EU's operational missions, the EU BAM Rafah and we have
some reference to the COPPS. Would you like to say anything about
the border resistance mission?
Dr Youngs: The basic problem is one similar
to the problem that has undermined the efficiency of the COPPS
mission, namely that these kind of self-standing security missions
are left rather vulnerable if they are not backed up by political
engagement, if they are not linked into the kinds of carrots and
sticks of the EU broader policies, like the Euro-Mediterranean
partnership or the neighbourhood policy. The border mission, like
COPPS, has been suspended; it is not operational. The co-ordination
of Member States to nations was done rather quickly in an ad hoc
way rather successfully but the mission never got to Rafah. When
the crossing point was closed when the Israeli soldier was kidnapped,
the EU could not do anything to prevent that even though its own
security advisers were arguing that they could guarantee security.
This practical on the ground presence and the potential of that
on the ground presence ends up looking very divorced from the
EU's overarching role.
Q146 Chairman:
We have had some references already to the problems and the lack
of impact of the Euro-Med partnership recently but the European
neighbourhood policy is being developed. I wonder whether in particular
ways you can see it fulfilling a useful function in terms of the
problems we have been discussing.
Dr Youngs: Yes, I can. The neighbourhood policy
offers real potential because it focuses on the bilateral level
relations individually with the occupied territories and with
the Israelis. Diplomats feel it can be used in a more agile way.
It enables the EU to modulate responses, rewards, inducements
in a more precise way. That is the case and that bilateral link
through the neighbourhood action plans is something very positive
and should be encouraged. Of course, at the same time that should
not be developed to the detriment of the regional philosophy underlying
the Barcelona process that again was one of the strong points
of the EU's understanding that a peace process had to be embedded
within a regional framework. In two ways the neighbourhood action
plans could be important. I would think that if we do move forward
to a situation where the EU can re-engage with a new unity government,
putting on the table the prospect of a full implementation of
the action plan with the Palestinian Authority that could provide
real incentive and inducement both to Fatah and Hamas within that
unity government. Second, more broadly, is the question of whether
a neighbourhood action plan could provide the EU with the means
of greater leverage over Israel. Since the action plan was signed
in 2004 with Israel actually a lot has been going on in terms
of technical preparations to bring Israel into a very large number
of EU programmes on the environment, transport, energy, culture,
research, education, a whole range of ideas for deepening co-operation
with Israel. I think that ought to be intensified as a way of
gaining leverage over the final settlement issues. Officials insist
this does represent a step change in relations with Israel. They
insist that because of the inducements on offer through the action
plan Israel has begun to engage more positively again, for example
addressing some human rights issues through a new informal EU
Israeli human rights dialogue, but of course one still has some
doubts over whether this neighbourhood action plan does really
have the carrot to exert influence over Israel. Israel is not
eligible for large amounts of EU funding under the new European
neighbourhood partnership instrument; it only gets a very small
amount of aid for regionally linked projects because of its high
per capita GDP. There the EU's carrots pale in comparison to the
direct military assistance provided by the United States. Also
a crucial question is that so far there has not been much talk
about specifically linking all these ways of bringing Israel into
existing EU programmes to conditions relating to comprehensive
peace negotiations. I think that is perhaps where the EU could
develop its incipient neighbourhood policy. There are advances
there. Some have advocated a more creative use of the principle
of variable geometry, for example talking about offering the prospect
of Israel aligning itself to CFSP positions. Of course, in the
current circumstance that might be rather too ambitious but it
opens the prospect of using the neighbourhood policy to gain some
leverage over broader political issues.
Q147 Lord Crickhowell:
The role of the Commission in the Palestinian election Dr Springborg
has already spoken of the failure to follow-up with the transition
but is there any other comment you would like to make about the
European Commission in the observation in the election in relation
to the transition?
Dr Springborg: It was an important role. The
European Union brought a stamp of certification to those elections
which was very important. Had the outcome of those elections been
in serious doubt it would have had still more negative consequences
than the actual ones of the Hamas victory itself. The European
Union, with others, did a professional job in its observation.
I think it was very important for opening up at least the possibility
of a transition. The failure to support the transition is another
matter, but the role of election monitoring, especially in this
very sensitive case of those 2006 elections, was an important
one and was done well.
Dr Youngs: I would agree with that. The EU provided
very valuable support to the Central Electoral Commission and
that played a very influential role. The EU had already begun
to play an influential role in electoral observation in the presidential
elections at the beginning of 2005 where the EU Commission did
make some quite pointed criticisms about Fatah manipulation of
those elections. That helped set in train a process where the
transition was possible. Of course the political decisions based
on those criticisms over the conditions of the elections were
not actually commensurate with those criticisms. While this might
seem water under the bridge now, I think the lesson is that the
EU's ambivalence over elections from the mid-1990s in the occupied
territories was designed to keep the rise of Hamas at bay but,
in fact, simply compounded the conditions for its ascendancy.
Q148 Lord Anderson of Swansea:
Clearly there are major constraints on people-to-people contact
between Israelis and Palestinians. Occasionally we have visits
of mothers from both sides who have lost children. There were
some cultural and sporting developments. How significant are these?
Are they worth supporting at EU level people to people?
Dr Springborg: It is important to keep hope
alive. I do not think the broader context at the present time
is terribly conducive to significant gains from them, but our
Institute as well supports such activities. We do so because we
think it is important to keep threads of contact there, especially
among young people. To expect those to translate into breakthroughs,
either at the diplomatic level or at on-the-ground institutional
level, would be expecting too much.
Q149 Chairman:
I wonder if, in conclusion, I could ask you a question which you
have not been sent in advance but which does come out of our discussions.
What do you think should be the key priorities for the European
Union in its policy towards the Middle East peace process following
the formation of the Government of National Unity?
Dr Youngs: I come back to the point that I think
it should try to re-engage with the broader institutional reform
agenda. That is the area where the EU can add value, where it
has considerable expertise from other regions and where it does
have the instruments at least in place that it had begun to develop
over the last decade under the rubric of the Euro-Mediterranean
partnership. The one other area we have not talked about where
the EU can add value is the broader regional framework, particularly
in terms of relations with Iran where the EU has offered to oversee
or sponsor a regional security framework. That is the right kind
of idea. Obviously there are challenges there in relations with
Iran at the moment as well and the need to pursue the nuclear
file without depriving oxygen from the Iranian reformers who are
just beginning to reappear. That broader regional framework also
needs to be brought into the picture. In particular the EU needs
to work on its relations with the GCC that are being pursued very,
very slowly: 17 years of negotiations for a free trade area that
still has not been agreed to some degree because of the EU protectionism
that again undercuts its strategic influence. There as well the
broader context needs to be understood.
Dr Springborg: To reinforce what Richard said,
the opportunity of the formation of a National Unity Government
provides a rare occasion in which the two things that we have
talked about, high and low policy, can be brought together. Both
the acceptance of that government and then a certain amount of
conditionality imposed on the basis of the expenditure of EU funds
for the improvements of governance and state building, naturally
go together in my mind. Sending the high level signal that we
are willing to work with you and here is how we are going to do
it to enhance the quality of government on the ground in Palestine
is an opportunity that should not be lost.
Q150 Lord Anderson of Swansea:
It is probably fair to say that the Mecca agreement was a Saudi
initiative rather than any wider organisational one. Obviously
the EU would have little, if any, leverage over the OIC but on
the other regional groupings, the Arab League and the GCC, do
you see these having a sufficient relationship with the EU where
the EU can encourage them to engage constructively and positively
in the peace process?
Dr Springborg: I do not think these multilateral
organisations in the Middle East and beyond amount to terribly
much. The Arabs themselves have allowed, and indeed encouraged,
the Saudis to take the lead in this and they have done so. It
would be counter-productive for the European Union, or any other
external actor, to try to deflect the will, as it were, of the
Palestinians and their Arab neighbours into trying to find other
organisations that would be more suitable venues for diplomacy.
If this is their choice for diplomacy, I would say good luck to
them and we would be happy to fall in behind. After all, the EU
and the US have excellent relations with Saudi Arabia so it is
fortuitous that they are willing to take the lead in this area.
Q151 Lord Anderson of Swansea:
Your impression is that the countries in the region have given
the leadership to the Saudis, and the other organisations, be
it the GCC or the Arab League, are unlikely to play much of a
role.
Dr Springborg: Yes, very much so.
Chairman: Dr Springborg and Dr Youngs,
on behalf of the Committee can I say how very much we have appreciated
your evidence this morning. You have provided us with a great
deal of very useful information in advance of our visit to Brussels
in two weeks time. Our questions in Brussels will be a great deal
better as a result of what we have heard from you this morning.
We are particularly grateful to Dr Youngs, who spends most of
his time in Spain, for coming to our meeting today. We are also
grateful to you, Professor Springborg, and thank you very much
again on behalf of the Committee.
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