The head of European diplomacy, High Representative Josep Borrell, talked about Europe between two wars, the war in Ukraine and the war in Gaza, and drew parallels between them at a diplomatic seminar on Wednesday in Lisbon organized for Portuguese ambassadors.
On Friday, he travelled to Lebanon, a key country in the current war, to try to prevent the spill-over of the Israel-Hamas war. Tension in the region is high after the targeted killing of a top Hamas leader in Hezbollah’s quarters in Beirut on Tuesday. Hezbollah leader Nasrallah has threatened to revenge his death but is likely to avoid escalating the current hostilities to a full-scale war with Israel.
Diplomatic solution with Lebanon?
According to a media advisory, the High Representative will re-emphasize the need to advance diplomatic efforts with regional leaders with a view to creating the conditions to reach a just and lasting peace between Israel, Palestine and in the region.
During his visit (5 – 7 January), he will meet some key Lebanese politicians but also the Commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces and the Commander of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). According to a UN resolution after the previous war in 2006, the Lebanese army was supposed to be deployed at the border with Israel and replace Hezbollah.
But this never happened and the Hezbollah militia, supported by Iran as part of its ‘axis of resistance’ against Israel, has taken over the whole of southern Lebanon. The UN resolution (UNSC 1701) required them to withdraw to the Litani river about 30 km north of the border.
At a press conference in Lisbon, Borrell reminded that tens of thousands of people on both sides of the Israeli-Lebanese border have already been displaced because of the current low-intensity war between Israel and Hezbollah. In fact, it is becoming more intensive every day and can escalate by miscalculation by both sides.
“The risk of what happened in 2006 happening again, that is, an open war, is a risk, unfortunately not negligible,” he said. “What happened yesterday with the death of one of the Hamas leaders, is one more factor that could push the conflict to escalate.” But he would probably not travel to Lebanon on Friday if he thought that a full-scale war could erupt any day.
Only a diplomatic solution based on the UN resolution can prevent a full-scale war with devastating consequences for both sides. France and the US are reportedly working on such a solution but the chances for it are considered small considering Hezbollah’s dominance and veto power in Lebanon.
Imposed solution of Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
Until now, the common EU position has been that Israelis and Palestinians must negotiate and agree by themselves on a mutually acceptable solution, helped by some pressure, mediation and incentives from the outside. But judging from Borrel’s latest two speeches, he seems to have given up on that.
First, he spoke at the so-called Grand Continent Summit on 20 December for high-level political, scientific and intellectual figures at a retreat in the Italian Alps. That speech has been transcribed by the European External Action Service (EEAS) but went mostly under the radar until media reported about the diplomatic seminar in Lisbon this week where he gave a similar speech.
By now Borrell refers to the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas on 7 October as a tragedy which “signaled the collapse of the untenable status quo in the conflict”. He learned two lessons from it, he says. “Firstly, the solution cannot be found by the parties to the conflict themselves. It must be imposed from outside by the international community, the Arab neighbours, the United States and Europe.”
In the Israel-Hamas war, Borrell equated the two sides as both unwilling to peace and opposing to a two-state solution. “Hamas is opposed to the very existence of the State of Israel. But the current Israeli government is also opposed, and for a long time, to the two-state solution,” he said.
He is right about Hamas, which is an EU-designated terrorist organisation responsible for atrocities which were reminiscent of the Holocaust. It should be dismantled and removed from power in Gaza. Borrell himself has stated three yes’s and 3 no’s for the “day after”. One of them is that there can be no reoccupation of Gaza by Israel and no return of Hamas to Gaza.
New government in Israel after elections?
Israel is a democracy where the majority of the population wants peace. Today it happens to have the most far-right government in its history but that can easily change after elections, especially after the government’s failure to foresee and prevent Hamas surprise attack on 7 October. The opinion polls show that the coalition government is lagging far behind the opposition if there were elections now.
“Today, there is a government, tomorrow there will be another as before there was another,” Borrell said in a speech to the European Parliament in March last year on the Israeli government’s push for a controversial judicial overhaul which would undermine the separation of powers in the country.
Borrell did not specify how an “imposed” solution would look like and how it at all is possible to impose any solution. Normally it takes two to make peace make and make it sustainable. Hardly any peace has been imposed after any war unless the losing side surrendered unconditionally. Furthermore, the EU relies on its soft power to bring about change and has not tried to impose any solutions on other countries.
In fact, Borrell’s second conclusion clarifies that what needs to be imposed is the end goal of the peace process while leaving the details to the negotiations. “We need to change the negotiation method. In Oslo, the endpoint of the negotiations was not clearly defined,“ he said, referring to the Oslo Peace Accords, that were not fully implemented and did not reach the talks on the final status issues. “We need to reverse this process.”
“The international community needs first to define an endpoint (the two-state solution, editor’s comment), and then, through negotiation, Israeli and Palestinian must find the way to reach it.” The crucial point which he did not address is that the Palestinians need to be represented by a legitimate leadership following long over-due elections in which terrorist organisations would be excluded from participation.
Josep Borrell added that the Arab states, including those that have recognised Israel and maintain relations with it, are making it clear that it is out of the question for them to pay once again to rebuild Gaza if there is no guarantee that the two-state solution will actually be implemented. The reconstruction of Gaza and its infrastructure after the war will take years and require international funding.
M. Apelblat
The Brussels Times
