*** La paix au rabais: comment l'Union européenne renforce les colonies israéliennes. Centre Tricontinental (CETRI, 5 av. Sainte Gertrude, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve. Tel: (32-10) 489560 - Fax: 489569 - email: diffusion@cetri.be - Internet: http://www.cetri.be ). 2012, 35 pp.
Until now, the European Library series has only spoken to Agence Europe readers of books and reviews printed on paper that deal in one way or another with European events and construction. As a result of the apparently irresistible rise in e.books and tablets, at some point or other it will no doubt have to change its philosophy and move to the new forms of publishing. But that is not the reason for choosing this particular 'leading article.' Instead, it is a burningly hot topic given the precarious truce that has followed the most recent military outburst between Israel and the Gaza Strip that has led us to choose this e.booklet to top this issue of the European Library. Heavily backed-up attacks are made in these pages against the hypocrisy and tacit consent of the European Union and its Member States - some more than others, of course - through their humanitarian, religious, development, human rights and peace-consolidation organisations.
In the preface, former Dutch foreign minister and EU External Relations Commissioner from 1993 (a few months ahead of the signing of the Oslo Accords between Arafat and Rabin under the aegis of Bill Clinton) to 1999 Hans van den Broek says that the unceasing settlements policy carried out by Israel on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem is one of the main reasons, if not the key reason, for the lack of any positive developments in the Middle East, as this expansion (illegal under international law) threatens the 'viability of a two-state solution and therefore the concretising of peace, properly speaking. From the ground where they are operating, the NGOs that wrote the report demonstrate that one Israeli government after another has allowed the mushrooming of the settlements, established on the Left Bank a discriminatory two-speed system with settlers getting all the rights and privileges associated with Israeli citizenship while Palestinians are subject to Israeli military laws that deprive them of fundamental rights. As an example, the circulation of Palestinians on the West Bank and access to basic services like hospital treatment are hindered by more than 540 obstacles to circulation, whereas settlers have special roads to themselves. Worse, Israel is taking more than its fair share of the water table on the West Bank and thus drastically limiting Palestinians' ability to cultivate their own land.
No doubt some readers will say that the situation is very sad, but Europe is not responsible for it. That is not true! Although the European Union has always criticised the settlements and refuses to officially recognise Israel beyond its 1967 borders, including East Jerusalem, Hans van den Broek accuses Europeans of being careful not to turn their words into deeds: 'To date, we have abstained from using our large political and economic lever effect on Israel to juggle developments on the ground that go against our fundamental values and damage our strategic interests.' This abstention verges at times on the most shameful calculating complicity - according to the latest report from the World Bank, the volume of exports to the European Union from the illegal Jewish settlements (and the half a million people who live there) is €230 million a year, compared with only… €15 million for the four million Palestinians! Worse, while saying that the settlements are not part of Israel, the EU accepts products from the colonies stamped 'Made in Israel,' thus validating Israel's sovereignty over the Occupied Territories and leading European consumers to unwittingly support the settlements and human rights violations associated with them. Not to mention the European firms, dead to shame, that operate in the settlements…
Should we put up with this? That is certainly not the intention of the NGOs that wrote the report and which stud it with recommendations for national governments and the European Union. They recommend following the example of Denmark and the United Kingdom, which require all goods imported from the Jewish settlements to be labelled accordingly, and which dissuade companies from buying products from the settlements. In the same spirit, it is suggested that the settlements be excluded from the EU and EU Member States' relations with Israel. These are some of the ideas set out for continuing this battle which, over and above the fact that it is legitimate, explains Hans van den Broek, is also a way of keeping hope alive for all: 'these measures are solely aimed at illegal settlements outside Israel's recognised borders and are not a programme that is hostile to Israel. On the contrary, the maintenance of a solution based on the co-existence of two states should be seen as a way of boosting Israel's security and legitimacy.'
Michel Theys
*** BIRTE WASSENBERG, GIOVANNI FALEG (Eds.): Europe and the Middle East. The hour of the EU? Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes - Peter Lang (1 av. Maurice, B-1050 Brussels. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 Fax: 3761727 - email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). "Euroclio" series, No. 63. 2012, 147 pp, €20-70. ISBN 978-90-5201-828-7.
This book contains the proceedings of the third Academic Forum on European Security, held at the European Studies Institute in Strasbourg in 2010, but the contributions have been expanded upon and updated. It provides an overview of the challenges facing the European Union in the Middle East, along with the achievements and shortcomings of EU27 foreign policy in the region that make this policy a half-empty cup. The first section of the book examine Europeans' involvement in the Israeli-Arab conflict since 1967, with Prof. Rory Miller of King College London saying that throwing its political weight into the fray has done nothing to stop the EU being a 'political pygmy.' Not denying this, Amnon Aran (senior lecturer at City University in London) believes that the Middle Eastern enigma might provide the EU with an opportunity to get Israelis and Palestinians to opt for multilateral and regional diplomacy rather than hurtling down a bilateral impasse. The second section of the book has two authors critically examining relations between the EU and Iran, with researcher Amir Kamel showing that the sanctions on Iran by the EU27 to prevent it developing nuclear weapons have arrived too late because Iran has already capitalised on the growing oil needs in the EU to develop its nuclear technology. Energy expert Antonio Dai Pra believes on the contrary that oil could provide a way for the EU to renew a partnership with Iran that could lead to the emergence of a new, pro-Western elite in Teheran. In the third section of the book, three authors assess the contradictions between soft and hard power in the EU's relations with Lebanon and Morocco on the one hand, and Afghanistan on the other. The final section dissects the radical changes noticeable in Turkey's approach to the Middle East and examines the implication of this for the EU, with political scientists Giovanni Faleg and Sebastiano Sali arriving at the same comment that Turkey is undergoing a profound change of identity taking it from Kemalism to neo-Ottomanism. A view emerges from the book as a whole that is expressed by Giovanni Faleg: the changes under way in the Middle East will not wait for the EU, and there will be a price to pay for the EU if it continues to fail to act, namely being erased from this region of the world.
(MT)
*** EVELYNE RITAINE: La fabrique politique d'une frontière européenne en Méditerranée. Le 'jeu du mistigri' entre les États et l'Union. Centre d'études et de recherches internationales (Ceri, 56 rue Jacob, F-75006 Paris. Tel: (33-1) 58717000 - Fax: 58717091 - email: ryser@ceri-sciences-po.org - Internet: http://www.ceri-sciences-po.org ). Les études du Ceri series, No. 186. 2012, 37 pp.
Under what conditions was the Mediterranean area turned into an area of risk and how did those conditions determine the control processes set up to secure the European Union's external Mediterranean border? To scientifically answer this two-pronged question, Evelyne Ritaine is at pains in this book to denaturalise the need to seal off this border by historicising its production, in other words by deconstructing the cognitive and political production of these sealing mechanisms. Research director at the Bordeaux Political Institute, the author makes use of the tools of anthropology and sociology for her analysis of the clearly political meaning of the question of border control in the domestic political games of every Mediterranean country. In this way, she perceives the Mediterranean as a 'politically saturated border' where 'human tragedies unfurl that are in total contradiction with the European democratic ideal and respect of human rights.' Having a dig at the European Union for externalising border control to Libya, for example, under Gadaffi and for 'militarising proximity,' she concludes with some bitterness - basing her hopes on civil societies on either side of the Mediterranean - that 'in the gradual and erratic political construction of a European border, the Mediterranean seems to have lost some of its gleam of limen (threshold, place for meeting and relating to others) and taken on some of the rictus of limes (separation, a border enemies cannot cross).' Yet extremists in Europe continue to rant and rave…
(MT)
*** HOUDA BEN HAMOUDA, MATHIEU BOUCHARD (Eds.): La construction d'un espace euro-méditerranéen. Genèses, mythes et perspectives. Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes - Peter Lang (see above). "Euroclio" series, No. 61. 2012, 158 pp, €35-30. ISBN 978-90-5201-774-7.
Following on from a study day in Paris two years ago for young researchers - historians, political scientist and geographers - who are members of the Richie Association, this book deals with a subject often ignored to date, namely the tortuous and ever more tentative history of EuroMed cooperation projects. The eleven authors explain various aspects and the political, diplomatic, economic, intellectual and cultural foundations, inviting readers to return to the roots of the tumultuous relations that Europe could not fail to enter, dominated as it is by the fear of the Other, fear of the future, and the Arab-Muslim world characterised by the humiliations of the past, as Prof. Robert Frank so eloquently explains in the preface. The first chapters look at the Mediterranean policies of Italy, France and Spain from the 1950s to the 1980s, when the Mediterranean was used as an excuse for fundamentally national, short-term strategies, driven solely by the interests of European countries. Four other chapters look at the premises of European cooperation in the region, particularly in North Africa, with an essay on the broad EuroMed policy launched by the European Economic Community at the Paris Summit in 1972 that kicked off the multilateral approach that led to the Barcelona Process. In is against the backdrop of the Barcelona Process that the final part of the book opens, examining inter-cultural dialogue, showing that the said dialogue ended up being extremely disappointing. Highly useful explanations now that the Arab Spring is forcing both sides of the Mediterranean to have a new rethink of their relations, leading them to the question raised by Prof. Frank: 'How can good EuroMed relations be built when it isn't easy even to have good Euro-European or Arab-Arab relations?'
(MT)
*** EMMANUEL GODIN, NATALYA VINCE (Eds.): France and the Mediterranean. International Relations, Culture and Politics. Peter Lang (1 Moosstrasse, Postfach 350, CH-2542 Pieterlen. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3761727 - email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). "Modern French Identities" series, No. 86. 2012, 354 pp, €47-50. ISBN 978-3-0343-0228-9.
The authors of this book, who came together for a conference at Portsmouth University where Emmanuel Godin and Natalya Vince are lecturers, take a multidisciplinary examination of the relations of France and the southern rim of the Mediterranean and the consequences of these relations, for example in the light of the often complex forms of human contact in cities like Marseilles. Is Mediterranean policy different from Arab policy? Do the countries around what used to be the mare nostrum have a definable Mediterranean nature or would it be better to conceptualise the region as concentric circles centering on the Middle East? These are some of the questions answered in the book, which also discusses the role played by diasporas and the imprints left in the memory by colonialism, not to mention the role of Islam and racism. These questions are mostly examined from the viewpoint of France under Sarkozy, but they also apply to all other European countries that now have to deal with the consequences of the Arab Spring.
(PBo)
*** PATRICIA MADIGAN: Women and Fundamentalism in Islam and Catholicism. Negotiating Modernity in a Globalized World. Peter Lang (see above). "Religions and Discourse" series, No. 53. 2011, 338 pp, €58-90. ISBN 978-3-0343-0276-0.
A specialist in relations between the Christian and the Muslim worlds dives in this book into her historical and theological knowledge to help readers gain greater understanding of the complex relationships among gender, religion, economics and politics in a global context. She is particularly interested in how women in Islamic and Catholic countries criticise fundamentalist theological and cultural views and fight to occupy the place that is theirs in their respective religious traditions. The author argues that in this way, they are paving the way towards acceptance of modernity in their communities.
(PBo)