Israel in Depth, Episode 15

Host Dov Waxman interviews Guest: Anders Persson

Dov Waxman: Welcome to Israel in Depth, where scholars, policymakers, and leading experts come to discuss topics about Israel in depth. You're listening to our podcast by the UCLA Nazarian Center for Israel Studies. I'm Dov Waxman, the director of the Nazarian Center and the host of this podcast. Joining me for this episode of Israel in Depth is Dr. Anders Persson, a Swedish political scientist, who teaches at Linnaeus University in Sweden. His book, "EU Diplomacy in the Israeli-Arab Conflict, 1967 to 2019," was published last year by Edinburgh University Press. Based exclusively on primary sources, the book traces the evolution of the US policy toward the Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts over the past 50 years. And I'm talking with Dr. Persson today, just after there's been a surge in violence between Israel and the Palestinians in a mini-war, if you like, between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which just ended a few days ago with a fragile ceasefire. So let me begin with asking you, Dr. Persson, about the EU's reaction to this most recent crisis in Israeli Palestinian relations.

Anders Persson: Yeah, thanks a lot for having me on your show, Dov. And it's quite a sad story, the role of the EU here, because for the last five years (since 2016) it has not been able to have any kind of united position on this conflict. And this pattern repeated itself again, during this latest escalation between Hamas and Israel, where the EU's 27 foreign ministers were not capable of presenting any kind of united front. So it was a no show, and it was a no story, and they didn't contribute anything. And that is - it's a tragedy for us here in Europe.

Waxman: Not only I noted did they fail to issue a kind of any sort of united position on the recent violence, but I think they were quite slow, even in convening a meeting about it. It took days before they even got together to have any sort of. Was that also indicative of the kind of divisions that exists within the EU that they were so slow to even get together to even talk about this?

Persson: Yeah, I think that's also a sign that this is something which is very, very problematic for the EU's foreign policy. And now we have one member state - Hungary - which is no longer considered a democracy by the leading rating indexer, such as Freedom House.  And they have very tight alliances with Israel. And part of that alliance is to block any kind of critical EU statement, vis a vie Israel. And that is exactly the pattern that repeated itself this time around as well. Now, Israel has many other allies, primarily in Central and Eastern Europe, among the new member states, which have also sort of contributed to the divisions that we see today.

Waxman: So in that respect, Prime Minister Netanyahu's strategy of cultivating relationships with these populist European leaders like Viktor Orban in Hungary, most obviously, but he I believe he's done this with a number of European leaders. He's in some sense been successful in preventing the EU from taking a common position.

Persson: Yes, it is a strategic alliance. And it's very powerful as such, because it's important to remember here that the European Union is still with all its problems, the largest bloc of liberal democracies in the world. And as such, it has tremendous normative power. For example, when it comes to voting in the UN, many other states around the world - and especially liberal democracies from South America to Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea - they look very closely to the European position when it comes to votes in the UN and elsewhere. And of course, if there is no European position, no common united European position, then of course the whole role of the EU is very, very weakened here. And that is exactly what we have seen over the past five years. So a lot of people have talked about that, you know, increased recognition of the Palestinians of a Palestinian state. But in reality, what we are seeing and have been seeing for quite some time now is increased recognition of Israel. And that is, of course, also the lesson to be learned by the recent Abraham Accords.

Waxman: So you mentioned these past five years that these divisions have really manifested. Does that mean then that prior to 2016, that in earlier decades, you know, the EU and its predecessor, the European Community, was able to take a more united common position on the conflict?

Persson: Yes, absolutely both sort of in normative terms and when it comes when it came to the economic dealings with with both Israel and the Palestinian Authority and in other matters on the ground. But speaking here, in purely normative terms, the EU has been very, very successful over the decades in formulating many of the policy departures for these conflicts. What other people might say, call the parameters for resolving it. And this began in the 1970s, when the EU started to legitimize the Palestinians. They were first talked about as refugees, and the term Palestinians were used. It was very sensitive. Golda Mayer was the Prime Minister of Israel, and she was of course famous for having said that there were no such things as Palestinians. And after that, you talked about legitimate Palestinian rights, the need for Palestinian homeland, the need for Palestinian self determination, not unlike how the discourse one sounded about the Zionist movement before Israel was founded. And of course, this led to tremendous fights both with Israel and with the U.S. But in retrospect, it is clear that both Israeli government and various American administrations followed many of these and accepted these policy departures themselves. We saw the same pattern repeating itself in the 1980s when the EU legitimized the two main features of Oslo, which were mutual recognition and the land for peace formula. So the U.S. had a very powerful normative voice historically here.

Waxman: And has this been this normative role of kind of pioneering, if you like, some of the the frames of reference of the conflict and how we think about it? Has this been a very conscious, deliberate policy on the part of the EU to play this role of kind of presenting more innovative ideas, or ideas, at least that were, at one point controversial and, and trying to make them more acceptable? Is that something that the EU is done deliberately? Or is it more as it's kind of a byproduct of its own...other other factors that have shaped how the EU's engaged with the conflict?

Persson: Well, I would say both. I mean, on the one hand, there is a recognition in Europe that since the EU was this large block of liberal democracy and historical peace project, many European leaders - from left to right with liberals in between - have always seen the EU having a sort of special unique and moral role to play in the conflict. So it was very conscious in that regard. On the other hand, the EU often had very difficult is playing high politics here. They were often not present when the major peace negotiations took place., say Camp David 1978. When the Oslo Declaration of Principles in 1993, the Israeli-Jordan Treaty, Camp David 2000, and so on. But they did play very important roles beforehand and afterwards. And sort of issuing declarations have been one of the most important things that the EU has done here. What one can of course be critical and say, well, you know, what's the matter of you know spending 50 years issuing declarations? Will will I spend another 50 years doing so, as well? But I think it's fair to say that these declarations have mattered a lot.

Waxman: So I wonder - just today building off that. Do you see the EU still taking that role? I mean, is it in a position any longer to take this more innovative, even controversial stance? I mean, you described in the book how the EU has and its predecessor, the European Community, was long committed to the idea of Palestinian statehood, and a two-state solution to the conflict. Well before you know the United States and other countries. Now, of course, the two-state solution is much questioned and many people believe that it is no longer viable. Is the EU then at the forefront of rethinking an alternative? Is it continuing this role of kind of putting forward innovative ideas? I mean, one, one example might be the notion of a kind of confederal approach. The EU is itself a confederation.

Persson: Well, no, not at all. And I mean, for decades, we saw that either states, the big states of the U.S. or France or the U.K. or smaller states, like Sweden or Norway, led much of this normative diplomacy. Or organizations like the EU or the UN. What we see today instead is that many NGOs and individuals who have a big platform here are leading many of the new policy departures. Such as various IDs around one-state solutions and various forms of that, which more or less are anathema both to the EU and to the U.S. And also sort of new policy departures, such as whether the situation on the ground should be called apartheid or not. So in many of these discussions, states play no role at all. Whereas states used to lead these kind of discussions around policy departures. But that's not what we see today. Now, having said all of this, the EU still has tremendous leverage here, being the largest trading partner with Israel and the largest donor to the Palestinians. So they clearly have the tools, but they don't have the will and the capacity to do it.

Waxman: So is that partly, I mean, in in your book, you you argue that the the conflict the Arab-Israeli and and more specifically, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has long been really central to the EU's foreign policy. Has long been the conflict that they focused on at least externally? Is this is this shift that's taking place, as you've described it, in recent years because the conflict has been de-prioritized? Does it become less important? Or is it a function of, you know, partly as a function of the EU's focus on its own internal issues?

Persson: Well, I think both. I mean, looking back at what, you know, all the things that have happened over the past decade, which were so many - from the financial crisis, to the refugee flows to Europe, which were massive, to the wars in Syria, and Libya. In Iraq, the rise of ISIS, the Iranian deal, Donald Trump and Brexit, the rise of the populist there. I mean, I think that the short answer is that there are so many other fires burning - in the Middle East, in Europe and elsewhere. So there was there was no energy left to focus on this conflict. And of course, many of these things were also seen as strategically more important than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I mean, if you view it as a strategic matter, which I do, and which I think many European policymakers also do, then, of course, the importance of that goes up and down relative to other events in the world. Now, what we might see now after this latest escalation is that perhaps the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be back again, on the agenda. It has sort of a tendency of sort of super imposing itself on political agendas. And it has certainly done that this time, as well. Now it will, let's see how long it will last. But we'll see about that.

Waxman: So just looking backwards now over the EU's long role in this in a long involvement and you traced in your book, this 50-year-long involvement in the conflict. If today, it's no longer seen is no longer forwarded as the priority at once had, why in the past...why was it...What explains this importance that the EU attached to the conflict for so long, and not just in terms of conflict, but in terms of its wider understanding of the Middle East as well. You know, that this was it this belief that, you know, sometimes it's described as linkage theory that the, you know, resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is the key to unlocking security in the wider Middle East.

Persson: Well, it's, first of all, it's important to emphasize that this was a perception not only shared by Europeans. I think it's fair to say that Barack Obama subscribed to that too. Donald Trump did it in some kind of way, as well, even if he made sort of statements both for that perception and against it, which was typical of him. But sort of looking at the strategic issues from a European perspective, it is clear that in 1967, after the big June war, Europe depended for around 80% of its old consumption from the countries of the Middle East. Around 50% of its total supply of power back then. I'm talking about the EU, which was sort of Western Europe. Eastern Europe belonged to the Soviet Union, back then. So that's an important point to clarify. So it was a massive dependency on oil. Now, that became an even acute matter, even more acute matter after the next war in 1973, when the price of oil went up four times. Now that oil crisis didn't last very long, but it led to massive transferring of wealth from the industrialized world - from the U.S, Europe, parts of Asia, to the oil producing countries in the Middle East. Now that in turn led to an increase of an increase in trade of about 1,000% between the the EU and the OPEC countries (these are the oil producing countries in the Middle East in the 1970s). Thereby, of course, creating another strategic objective in trade. So we had energy, trade, also in the 1970s came the issue of terrorism. The Palestinian groups were pioneered here. A lot of the attacks were carried out in Europe. So that became a strategic matter as well. Then we had it with a beginning of the ages, we had the refugee flow started coming from the war in Lebanon in 1982. This is sort of the first war in the Middle East, where we see massive refugee flows to Europe. And these, of course, here we see linkages today. So for example, when I go to Malmo, a city in the south of Sweden, which has big problems with anti-Semitism, it has a lot of sort of Palestinian refugees there. And they came from Lebanon in the 1980s. And some later have have come from Iraq and from Syria. So this is one of ... here we see the linkages between the Middle East and Europe. And of course, this won't add up in the near 1970s. This conflict was also a big part of the Cold War. So there were a lot of escalations in 1973 were some people were afraid that the contract would lead to a superpower confrontation, and all of these kinds of things. These are sort of just some of the strategic issues involved.

Waxman: You in the book writer and focus on the EU and EC positions towards the conflict. Can you say a little bit about European public opinion? How European public opinion views this conflict, and is it changing? I mean, we see real shifts taking place in American public opinion, recently. And there's been a lot of discussion about growing support for the Palestinians among liberals in the United States. Is there in the EU context, by contrast...I think there's been a longer history of sympathy for the Palestinians. Is that still the case today? Or are attitudes shifting or becoming more polarized?

Persson: Well, I mean, making a long story short, I think it's still very polarized. But there are sort of a few trends available. I think it's worth going back sort of 20 years when we had a big pall in Europe in 2003, which was the greatest threat to world peace. And Israel won that in famous award almost 20 years ago. And it was seen as the greatest threat to world peace. Now, that's very different today, I will say. And the traditional perceptions that sort of that Europe is pro-Palestinian, and anti-Israeli is also shifting. The Palestinians lost a lot of support during and after the Second Intifada, with the suicide bombings, with the Islamists becoming the most prominent actors on the Palestinian scene. That lost a lot of support. Both sort of ideological support, and popular support for the Palestinian cause. With the rise of the populist right over the past decade and a half...they have in many European countries say around 20-25%. In general, those parts are very pro-Israeli. So we see a new huge constituency, being pro-Israeli, and they have a lot of impact. They are in some governments, they are well-represented in Parliament. So we see a new, very big pro-Israeli opinion emerging, where Israel is seen as an ally, as a sort of a role model for an ethno-nationalist state. Where we see as our illiberal connections. I think in in the future, these sorts of connections could be dangerous for Israel. And I think there are signs already now that Israeli politicians are a little bit wary of embracing these far right populists too much. For example, we say that last time Netanyahu met Orban and, and these kinds of things.

Waxman: So I wonder, I mean, if one factor that's shifted European attitudes as being the Jihadist terrorism in Europe itself, and this kind of identification that some now make for the terrorist threat that Israel has long dealt with and faced with that facing European countries. How much do does economics play into this shifting attitude as well? I mean, the EU has a has a very important trading relationship with Israel of course. If we think about the broader relationship between the EU and Israel, is it that the conflict is just becoming less important in that overall relationship as other factors like economics, like trade, become more important?

Persson: Well, yeah, I think you have a point there. And I will say like like this, that Israel has been very successful in sort of separating the economic relations from the political relations. And they are very solid. I don't think to be honest, that, you know, economic relations with Israel matters that much for the EU. Yes, Israel is an advanced economy. But still, the EU economy in nominal GDP is around 50 times bigger than Israel. So we really see here an economic superpower in the EU, dealing with a relatively minor economic power that is Israel. Now having said that, Israel is very powerful when it when it comes to say research and development. It's very powerful, of course, when it comes to intelligence matters. So these relations are, I think, are as important, or perhaps even more important than the economic relations, which are strong and solid, but still very unequal in terms of size.

Waxman: So you don't think there is any likelihood that the EU collectively at least would condition its economic relations with Israel, or its technical cooperation with Israel, its scientific cooperation, on Israel's policies towards the Palestinians. I mean, there's been this, you know, desire on in some in some parts for the EU, you know, given its its really economic relationship with Israel, to basically, you know, put more pressure - use that economic relationship as a form of leverage. And you mentioned before, that the EU hasn't really been willing to do this, to use the leverage that it has, Or do you see that changing? Why hasn't it used this leverage, even for what is or the Palestinians, for that matter.

Persson:  For a number of reasons. And here, of course, the transatlantic link is very, very important. So the EU is, of course, afraid of having bad relations with the U.S. if they get too tough on Israel. So that's one factor, which I think is worth mentioning here as well. There are a number of other points. I mean, before Donald Trump became president, the whole issue of differentiation - that is separating the internationally-recognized Israel within the 1967 borders, from the unrecognized elements, that was a big issue in EU's affairs. You could say already there that the EU has sort of used its economic leverage to get political gains. That's pretty much stopped after Trump became president. Now, this issue came up again, last summer, when Israel was about to annex the parts of the West Bank. It's difficult to say how close they were. But this issue came up then again, I think, quite seriously. And so it was sort of one of the issues that was being discussed how Israel gone about annexing parts of the West Bank. Now that never happened. But But uh, so it was on on the table. I will also say that the EU has used those sort of its political and economic leverage against Hamas in Gaza, because the isolation and the boycott of the Hamas regime is of course much more powerful when you're ...behind it. So that's one of the case - basically the only case - where it has used that. Now that has resulted in, you know, three, four wars in Gaza since with disastrous humanitarian consequences. So one can, of course, question the wisdom of that. But it should be seen in light of 911. The decision to place Hammas. 

Waxman: I just wonder whether the wisdom of that policy is being reconsidered in European Brussels today. I mean, you mentioned at the beginning of our conversation, the important role that the EU has taken historically, in challenging some of the conventional wisdom or consensus positions, you know, talking about recognition of Palestinian statehood, before it was common to do so, or talking about, or pushing for Israel to negotiate with the PLO before it was.. Could the EU today now maybe initiate or push for a different policy toward Hamas in the same manner, or is that no longer on the on the cards for the EU playing to take that role?

Persson: I have a hard time seeing it to be honest. And as you said, Dov, n the 1970s, the EU legitimize the PLO when it was connected to terrorism and seen as a terrorist organization by some. But it's very different when it comes to militant Islamists. Because that I mean, the whole debate on placing Hamas and the political wing of Hamas on a terrorist it happened on the very symbolic date of September 11 2003 by the EU, This, of course, will be seen and in the whole light of the debate around 911. And what was called the global war on terrorism. The point is, of course, that when you put groups on terror lists, it's very difficult to get them out of that. And the point is, of course, that yes, you isolate these groups. But you also isolate yourselves. So when we have seen this latest round, well, you know, we have seen two big wars in Gaza - 2008 2009, 2014, two smaller wars 2012 and this recent one. You isolate yourself when you when you put these groups on terrorist lists. And we have seen, of course, that European diplomacy has been completely absent from these rounds of fighting. Now, having said that, there is zero appetite in the EU for legitimizing militant Islamism. So I have a very hard time seeing it. I mean, one way forward would, of course, be Palestinian elections, some kind of unity government, that would be a way forward. But that seems to be off the table, as well, at the moment.

Waxman: So I wonder, I mean, that was my, you know, you've discussed very clearly how the EU has been deeply involved in this conflict for a long period of time, and taken a number of important positions, historically. But I wonder in closing, you know, looking looking forward now, do you think the EU can actually pay an even greater role in the future? Here in the United States there's a lot of discussion about the potential diminishing American role. That the Americans have historically been, you know, the primary mediator between Israel and the Palestinians. Kind of almost monopolizing that role. And it's not even clear any longer whether at least the Biden administration wants to do that. Would the EU step in? Can it play a bigger role? Does it even want to?

Persson: No, I have a hard time seeing the EU sort of replacing the U.S. as the lead mediator. But the Europeans, they have a very different role here than the Americans. And so it's important to emphasize. We are sort of the main donor to the Palestinian Authority. And also we pump in some money into Gaza. And that means that the Europeans are upholding these government structures. However imperfect, we are upholding the Oslo structures. Now stopping that aid, which some people suggest, would mean a complete collapse of governance structures in Gaza, and even more in in the West Bank. Now, that is one of the main lessons from the Middle East over the past 20 years. The enormous cost of the collapse of governance structures in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and elsewhere. And in light of that, it is very clear that we are sort of paying for our own security. We're paying for stability, and our own security by pumping this money in to the Palestinian Authority. So in that sense, we are part of the conflict, because if these structures collapse, they might trigger wider effects. Might threaten Jordan, might lead to real repercussions in Lebanon and elsewhere. And could lead in a worst case scenario to new refugee flows, which is something that European politicians absolutely want to avoid. So by upholding these structures, we are paying for our own security. And we are, of course, also much more geographically closer to this region than you are in America.

Waxman: Right. I think that's a point that is often, you know, lost on Americans - and for that matter, many Israelis who, you know, sometimes kind of wonder about the EU's involvement in this conflict. And, you know, the declarations and the statements that they make. You know, and what does it have to do with the EU? As you I think said...explained very, very clearly. The EU has a lot at stake in this conflict. It is it is intimately, inextricably involved in this conflict and will continue to be involved even if it is unable to formulate a common position any longer. Dr. Persson, I want to thank you for for shedding a lot of light and for sharing your insights into this issue that I think is widely misunderstood in terms of the EU's involvement in this. So I've learned a lot. I thank you for joining us on Israel in Depth. And for the listeners, you've been listening to an episode of Israel in Depth, produced by the UCLA Nazarian Center for Israel Studies. Thank you for listening.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai