European Union Policy Towards The Arab Israeli Peace Process

What are the achievements, the limits and the failures of the EU's involvement in the Arab-Israeli conflict? This book sets out to answer this question by analysing the development of European policy towards the conflict over the last forty years.

This book offers an analysis of the dynamics of Israeli-European relations and discusses significant developments in that relationship from the late 1950s through to the present day. The emphasis is placed on five broad themes that address different dimensions of the relationship: 1) Israeli-E.U. relations and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process; 2) Israeli-E.U. relations in a multilateral context; 3) the bilateral nature of Israeli-E.U. relations; 4) Israeli (mis)perceptions of the E.U.; 5) the future of Israeli-E.U. relations.

What kind of a power is the EU? What are the main factors that have provided the EU with the opportunities to construct its role in international politics? Which theoretical approaches are appropriate for the conceptualization of the EU foreign policy activity? Does the EU operate as a civilian power? And what is a civilian power? What are the key indicators for the 'Civilian Power Europe'? Beste İşleyen's study offers a comprehensive overview of the academic debate on the 'Civilian Power Europe' and questions whether the concept is applicable to past and present involvement of the EU in the Middle East peace process.

EU policy-makers have in the past decade endeavoured to formulate a substantial redefinition of the organisation's international ambitions. Attempting to carve out a new role as a key foreign and security policy actor in international politics, the EU has been involved in peace negotiations across the globe. Here, Taylan Ozgur Kaya looks at how this is enacted, with particular reference to the Middle East peace process. Expanding its political, diplomatic, economic and security role in the region, the EU, whilst still being the junior partner to the US, has increasingly played a more conspicuous role in the attempts to resolve (or at least mediate) the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Bearing this in mind, Kaya examines to what extent the EU manages to live up to its self-image as a key player in conflict resolution and crisis management in the region and beyond. With the financial and diplomatic future of Europe ever more in the spotlight, this book will appeal both to researchers of the Peace Process and to policy-makers.

This Chaillot Paper examines European involvement in the Arab-Israeli conflict. It focuses on European Union involvement in the conflict, with special, but not exclusive, attention to EU involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian dimension of the conflict.

The establishment of a Palestinian state has long been a strategic objective of EU and Russian foreign policy in the Middle East. However, over a decade after the creation of the road-map, the establishment of an independent Palestinian state has still not been achieved. Palestine in EU and Russian Foreign Policy uses the school of constructivism to provide a new understanding of EU and Russian foreign policy. It explores the failure of these global actors to speed up the process of establishing a Palestinian state, despite this being a strategic objective and top priority of their involvement in the Middle East peace process. The book then analyses the role of identity and self-other perception in the making of EU and Russian foreign policy towards the Middle East peace process. It is argued that Palestinian statehood provides a telling empirical example of how, and to what extent, the search for global actorness, as a matter of international identity, informs foreign policy-making by global actors. The book then proceeds to discuss why the EU and Russia are so eager to be involved in initiating a peace settlement. Offering a new understanding of foreign policy-making by global players in Middle Eastern politics, this book will appeal to students, scholars and policymakers working in International Relations and European, Russian and Middle Eastern studies.

This book examines the interplay between the national and the European levels in EU foreign policymaking, focusing on the Middle East. European engagement in peacemaking in the Middle East dates back to foreign-policy cooperation in the early 1970s. Following the launch of the peace process in 1991, the EU and its Member States further stepped up their involvement in conflict resolution, focusing on one central area of EU engagement – the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This book covers the period from the beginning of the peace process in 1991 until 2008, and focuses on the actions of the big three Member States: Germany, France and the UK. Using the Europeanization concept as framework of analysis, the book examines the problematic dynamics between these Member States’ national foreign-policy models and the construction of a common European conflict-resolution policy. It also provides interesting new insights into the EU’s international role and potential, addressing the often neglected question of how Europeanization effects help to mitigate some of the classical limitations of European foreign policymaking. The book will be of great interest to students of EU policy, Middle Eastern Politics, peace and conflict resolution, security studies and IR.