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Can Europeans help to get the peace process in the Middle East back on track?

In the movie Groundhog Day, a self-centred television weatherman waking up to an approaching blizzard in a small town becomes trapped in a time loop where he is doomed to repeat the same tedious and unpleasant day over and over again – until he manages to break out of the pattern.

The EU is now intensifying efforts to revive the Middle East peace process and achieve a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

This comes despite, or maybe because of, the key challenge for European diplomats in the coming weeks, which is to convince Israel to come up with a credible military and political strategy in Gaza.

Currently, Tel Aviv seems determined to eliminate every Hamas fighter and destroy every tunnel and weapon they can find, whatever the costs, with no comprehensive political solution in sight.

“The regional situation is increasingly complex,” a senior EU official told reporters on Friday, not with some unease.

“At this point in time, Israeli officials don’t talk about the two-state solution (…) they only talk about the war and (…) about the military objective of destroying Hamas,” the diplomat said.

“We have to deal with that. It’s our responsibility, our duty, to look beyond that.”

For that, EU’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell has drafted a 10-point peace plan for a “credible, comprehensive solution” to the Israel-Palestine conflict, according to a draft document seen by Euractiv.

It outlines a series of steps that could eventually bring peace to the Gaza Strip, establish an independent Palestinian state, normalise relations between Israel and the Arab world, and guarantee long-term security in the region, according to the non-paper.

A key element of the EU’s future peace roadmap is a “Preparatory Peace Conference” involving the EU, the US, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Arab League, and the United Nations.

The EU’s initiative comes as Israel faces mounting international pressure to end its offensive in besieged Gaza, and the US is stepping up efforts to broker a diplomatic solution to the intensifying hostilities between Israel and Lebanon’s Hizbollah.

At the same time, fears grow in Washington that the window is narrowing for averting a full-blown war on the shared border.

Arab states, too are working on an initiative to secure a ceasefire and the release of hostages in Gaza as part of a broader plan that could offer Israel a normalisation of relations if it agrees to “irreversible” steps towards the creation of a Palestinian state.

Arab officials have discussed the plan, which could include Western nations agreeing to formally recognise a Palestinian state, or supporting the Palestinians being granted full membership of the UN, with the US and European governments.

But getting Israel to engage meaningfully will require, among other things, having the US fully on board, reviving the influence and legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority, and potentially a successor to hardline Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

When EU foreign ministers meet with their Israeli, Palestinian and several Arab counterparts on Monday (22 January) one might see how serious the push towards a longer-term peace solution can be.

There is no plan to have Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz and his Palestinian counterpart, Riyad al-Maliki, at the same time in the meeting room or to meet each other directly as this would “certainly not go down well at this stage, an EU official said.

Instead, EU diplomats said they aim to sound out each side over ways to end the violence on the ground and look at the next steps towards post-Gaza war peace.

Without the participation of Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and other relevant players, any peace conference will be unworkable, EU diplomats agree.

In that sense, having the Israelis and Palestinians come to Brussels, as well as key Arab stakeholders, has been welcomed in Brussels corridors as a small success already.

But securing regional and EU member states’ buy-in will be an uphill struggle.

For decades, Europeans have found it hard to accept that despite being the largest trading partner to both sides and the main donor to the Palestinians, they have had little impact when it comes to peace efforts.

Then again, this shouldn’t surprise anyone either as finding balanced common positions towards the region has become more difficult in recent years, which has become painfully obvious with the bickering between member states over ceasefire wordings in the past few months.

“It will be easy to take potshots at this and point out why it will never work,” Steven Everts, director at the EU Institute for Security Studies (EUISS), told Euractiv.

“But we do need a fundamental change in dynamic. And I have yet to hear of a better plan.”

So far, European and international peace efforts have had mediocre success.

Last September, the EU’s diplomatic service (EEAS) presented plans to help lead a new ‘incentives’-focused Middle East peace initiative, aimed at re-starting talks between Israel and Palestine, which found broad support across the region.

“It felt a bit like Groundhog Day,” an EU official told Euractiv less than a week after the 7 October Hamas attack made progressing with any efforts unviable.

An attempted peace conference in Cairo in October, which Israel did not attend and where the United States was represented by its local ambassador, had no demonstrable impact on the situation.

Israel’s absence from an EU-Med summit in November did not bode well for Europe’s Middle East diplomacy either.

An early initiative for a ‘peace conference’ floated by Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez in December has largely been dismissed as ‘navel-gazing’ by EU diplomats from across the bloc, particularly after patchy and messy European response over the first weeks of the conflict had impacted the bloc’s credibility, especially with Arab states.

“It’s good to be thinking about the day after and prepare for peace. Yet, it is a hard sell,” Ricardo Borges de Castro, head of Europe in the World at the European Policy Centre (EPC), told Euractiv.

“Internally we are divided about what is going on and how to respond. Externally, the EU had little influence in the region before and now, after all the mishandling and foreign policy freelancing, I think we have even less influence,” Borges de Castro said.

According to him, diplomatic efforts could now be undermined after Borrell on Friday openly accused Israel of having ‘created’ and ‘financed’ the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

“After Borrell’s remarks on Israel and Hamas, we cannot really be sure the Israelis will ever listen to him. He was already perhaps seen too close to the ‘Spanish’ position, now it is probably even worse,” Borges de Castro said.

EU IN THE WORLD

WIDER EUROPE

ACCESSION STEPS | The European Commission this week announced it was “now going to start” the EU accession screening process for Ukraine and Moldova, with member states already wondering why the process for the two Eastern candidates had not started in December, as expected.

DEFENCE BRIEFING

ALWAYS PREPARED? | NATO members and defence industries must step up commitments to meet the military’s needs to prepare for all eventualities because we are “in an era in which anything can happen at any time”, the alliance’s military committee chief, Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, warned this week.

SCAF PROGRESS | Belgium is expected to join the flagship Future Combat Air System (FCAS) to build the next-generation European fighter jets ‘in a few weeks as an observer nation, the country’s defence minister told Euractiv this week.

CYBER DEFENCE | Europe’s armed forces that want to cooperate must make sure their cyber-defence technologies and methods are compatible, Belgium’s Defence Minister Ludivine Dedonder warned.

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