A total of 43 countries from both sides of the Mediterranean Sea have gathered today in Barcelona to celebrate the VIII Regional Forum of the Union for the Mediterranean, a meeting with a single point on the agenda: to analyze the situation of the Palestinian conflict Israeli and reflect on how to overcome the current dramatic moment. “It will be the first time that the European countries, beyond the Twenty-seven, and the Arab countries sit down to discuss the situation”, celebrates Josep Borrell, who will co-chair the meeting together with the vice prime minister and minister of ‘Exteriors of Jordan, Ayman Safadi. Borrell would not be surprised, he admits, if the Arab countries took advantage of the meeting to criticize Europe for something he clearly perceived during his trip to the region last week, the resounding rejection of the European position, which they do not understand. “Their perception is that when we say that Israel has the right to defend itself, we give Israel carte blanche. This is not the case, the EU’s common position says very clearly that international law, including humanitarian law, must be respected. The visit of President Pedro Sánchez and the Belgian Prime Minister, Alexander De Croo, to Israel has shown that we demand that it be respected”, commented Borrell in an interview on Friday in his office, hours before the Jewish State accused Spain and Belgium of complicity with terrorism. Concern over the rise of the far-right also hovered over the talk, in which the former foreign minister also spoke for the first time of his displeasure with the PSOE’s pacts with ERC and Junts and criticized the PP for holding “national debates ” in Europe.
This animosity towards the Western position on Gaza is not unique to the Arab world.
indeed Look at the reaction of Latin America. From a diplomatic point of view it has been even stronger. Some countries have severed relations or summoned our ambassadors to tell them that they see our attitude in Gaza as incompatible with what we stand for in Ukraine. Countries like Chile, which have helped us a lot in terms of condemning Russia, tell us they don’t understand our position on Gaza. They don’t think we’re consistent. They are different conflicts, but global public opinion compares our position to both.
Could this take its toll on the EU, for example, when it seeks support from the UN over Ukraine?
The risk is real. There are many countries that have been against the Russian invasion because they understand that it is a violation of the United Nations Charter, but they have only had a formal condemnation and no sanctions. They do not have the same sense of moral indignation at what is happening in Ukraine as we do, who are much more committed to principled and existential issues. His feeling is that this does not correspond with our attitude towards Gaza. Some Arab head of state has said it in very harsh words, they say that it seems that we do not value the lives of some and others in the same way.
How many times have you heard it while touring the region?
Many times It is difficult to explain that the EU is a set of states and that each one is sovereign in terms of foreign policy. Sometimes the national positions are at a common minimum that does not allow me to go further. I have to build a common European position and represent it when it is there.
In this case, the EU set the common position on 15 October.
Yes, there is a European Council minimum agreement that supports Israel’s right to defend itself, but within the respect of international law and humanitarian law, and calls for humanitarian pauses, in the plural – that is, intermittent – because some said that asking for a pause was like asking for a ceasefire, and this is not the common position of the EU or the US. But when it comes time to vote in the UN, our unity breaks down. The only meeting point with our common position would have been abstention, but if four countries say they will vote against, then eight will vote in favor. It is the reflection of the deep division that exists and that responds to historical reasons, to the different responsibility that some and others feel they have with respect to the State of Israel. Now fortunately a truce has been reached, associated with an exchange of hostages, but it was negotiated by Qatar.
What will happen when it ends?
We hope it will last and lead to a ceasefire. The same agreement foresees the possibility of extending it if Hamas releases more hostages. The hope is that during this time negotiations can be carried out, as requested by Sánchez and De Croo. The problem is that here everyone looks at their pain and does not take into account the pain of the other, but the images of the bombings of Gaza are as horrible as those of the killings of the kibbutzim. I visited one and told the Israeli minister: one horror does not justify another horror, and a few kilometers away things are happening that the UN describes in these same terms, as a horror, due to the number of civilian casualties. The International Criminal Court is investigating.
Regarding the animosity towards the EU’s attitude, shouldn’t the EC be self-criticizing? Perhaps it did not help to understand the European position that Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi announced out of nowhere the suspension of all aid, or that President Ursula von der Leyen forgot to specify a few days that Israel must act within international law, as the common position says.
The Commissioner’s announcement to suspend aid did not help one bit. As vice-president of the EC I had to express my disagreement with the decision, which my fellow commissioner could not take freely. The foreign ministers had the same opinion. If we Europeans want to have credibility in terms of defending universal values, we need as much consistency as possible in our position on the various conflicts. Our position has been weakened by the one we have taken in Gaza, because we limit ourselves to saying that the law must be respected, when the question is whether it is respected or not. To me, like Sánchez and the UN agencies, it seems to me that much more needs to be done and that much more can be done to limit civilian casualties and the suffering of the population.
Does he worry about the announced absence of the Israeli Government today at the UfM or the accusation that its original meaning is being “undermined” to turn it into “another forum where all the Arab countries attack Israel”?
Yes, the original meaning of the UfM is regional cooperation, but we live in exceptional circumstances. Frankly, if at a time like this we sat down to talk about youth exchanges or renewable energies, it would seem that we are out of touch with reality. Our Arab colleagues said that either the meeting was suspended or had only one item on the agenda, the situation of the conflict. But this is not an anti-Israel conspiracy either. Israel, as a member of the UfM, is invited and has the right to come or not. In fact, it has always been represented on a very low scale in the past.
But he had never left the chair empty.
No, but the presence was symbolic. The organization cannot ignore the great problems of the region. Talking is the first step. I insist, this is not a plot against Israel.
The EU claims that Israel will only be safe if it signs peace with the Palestinians, not just with Arab countries. Because of your contacts in Israel with the Government and civil society, do you think they are beginning to see it?
The State of Israel is one thing and its Government is another, and its policies are one thing and the Jewish people are another. I claim my right to criticize the Israeli Government without being accused of being anti-Semitic. This Government lived in a certain denial of reality and, in some way, still denies it, for example, in the West Bank, despite the fact that it is a pressure cooker. When you talk to them about the serious crisis of violence that exists, which this year has caused 400 Palestinian victims, about the demolitions, about the occupation of Palestinian territories by settlers, they minimize the problem. There is no awareness that there is a serious problem; in any case, even a permissiveness on the part of those who could avoid it.
Does he see Biden pressuring Netanyahu to negotiate?
Biden has put a lot of pressure on Netanyahu to make the military response consistent with international law and has shown more empathy for the Palestinian situation than several European leaders. Biden has said that they should not let anger rule them, because it will only create more conflicts for the future. They will tell me that it could do a lot more, after all, the US is its biggest military supplier. But, diplomatically and politically, it has acted to stop the scope of the Israeli response.
There are already more than 14,000 dead…
I’m not saying we got what we want.
The two-state solution is being proposed again, but from the region it is said that it is already too late.
Instead of repeating the two-state solution for 30 years without doing anything to make it a reality, we have given tactical cover to a strategy to make it impossible in the medium term. While we were talking about the two states, a strategy of occupying the territory and settling the population has been developed which has made it increasingly difficult. But someone tell me what the alternative is! What I don’t want is to hear Israeli ministers saying that the 2.5 million Gazans must leave, or the invitation to other countries in the region to each take a piece. It was hard for me to admit it, but too many voices have called for it to be a solution.
The victory of the far-right Geert Wilders in the Netherlands has been a shock for the EU. What lessons should he draw from it in the face of the 2024 elections?
What happens in Gaza and Ukraine will be the defining parameters of the meeting. Europe is a society that is beginning to feel a lot of fear, and fear is not a good counselor. Society sees that it is surrounded by a circle of conflicts, it is experiencing a demographic winter that can only be reversed by an immigrant population that some countries reject and it lives in a system in which the external borders of each country are those of all, but there is no a common migration policy. All this creates a feeling of fear and insecurity that gives rise even to reactions of violence, look at Ireland. There is a breeding ground, a fertile ground for bogus solutions to real problems. The schemes on which Europe has built the modus vivendi are cracking, and this raises existential questions. Politics must respond to those questions.
Should Mark Rutte have defended the EU more against Wilders Europhobic attacks?
I am a convinced European, but not a Eurobeat. I do not see only virtues and no flaws in Europe, but I am convinced that most of the problems of Europeans have no solution within the national framework. In the same way that there are national problems that should not be solved in the European framework, for example, bringing to the European Parliament a strictly national debate, the amnesty law. It is a misuse of Europe. I already said it when I was president of the EP, the Europeans have let Europe be done because it was good for them and it has worked, but there has been no political commitment on which Europe we want. In the end Europe will be more political or it won’t be. In the EU we have technically solved political problems, but this has a limit.
What are the effects of the PP strategy in Brussels?
It seems counterproductive to me, because we give an image of Spain that does not correspond to our reality. You cannot criticize the entirety of the Spanish political and legal system. One can discuss the amnesty, be for it or against it, but it cannot be said that the Spanish political and legal system has suffered a kind of cardiac arrest. It is counterproductive because, in addition to not being true, they give weapons to the independenceists themselves in criticizing the Spanish system.
“Those who know me can imagine what I think about the amnesty”, he told us a few days ago. What do you think about the law?
Leaving aside questions of constitutionality, in which I am not an expert, and those of political motivation, that is, of its necessity and its virtue, I can tell you that I do not share the account of the process that is being carried out to the agreements between the PSOE and Junts and ERC. The actions and responsibilities of independence are not mentioned. It seems that we make a good deal of his theses about a conflict that supposedly begins in 1714. I do not share this account. And I don’t know if it was necessary. But it is not my interpretation of what happened in Catalonia in those years.
Brussels has asked to see the law. What route do you see in the exam?
Commissioner Didier Reynders already said it: when it is approved, the EC will study it, as it does with any regulation that is approved in a Member State, because every year it makes a report on the rule of law in all the countries of the EU
