Yesterday united in stopping the Iranian strikes against Israel, the Arab countries, Europe and the United States must now impose peace on both the Israelis and the Palestinians.
The United States could of course lose interest in the Middle East because it no longer needs its oil. They would have a lot to gain from this in the form of political tranquillity and budgetary savings, except… Except that politics abhors a vacuum and by withdrawing from this region, they would be allowing Russia to continue to invest there, as it is doing in Africa. Already closely linked to the Kremlin, since it supplies drones to attack Ukraine and it was with Russian help that it saved the day for the Damascus regime, the Iranian theocracy would be considerably strengthened, Russia, Iran and their common Chinese ally would then become the dominant force in the Middle East, and the assertiveness of this trio would alter the entire international balance of power, to the detriment of the United States and in favour of China.
As long as the mullahs can use the Palestinian misfortune to wrap themselves in the flag of Islamic resistance to the “Judeo-crusaders”, the Arab capitals will continue to face the political challenge posed by Iran and its regional allies. But there is nothing cyclical about this challenge. It dates back to the confrontation between the Persian Empire and the Arabian Peninsula and to the Shiite schism that the defeated and forcibly converted Persia set up against its Arab victors. For the Gulf monarchies, what is at stake is nothing less than their control of the region and the pre-eminence of Sunnism.
Finally, for Europe, the Middle Eastern shore of the Euro-African lake that is the Mediterranean has become a time bomb whose ticking can be heard ever more clearly. Iraq has split into three countries, Kurdish, Shia and Sunni. Without a state or an economy, Lebanon is no more than a memory of what it once was. A field of ruins, Syria has been reduced to Damascus and the Alawite coast. Once the pride of the Arab world, Egypt would no longer be able to make ends meet without Saudi cheques and the subjugation these cheques imply, and Saudi Arabia itself has entered a period of inevitable change, the outcome of which no one can predict.
If it does not want to see chaos spreading to its borders, spreading to the Maghreb and Turkey, bringing hundreds of thousands of refugees to its shores and soon destabilising its 27 Member States and Great Britain, the European Union must contribute as quickly as possible to extinguishing the Israeli-Palestinian fuse before it ignites this regional powder keg.
Undoubtedly, one will say, but how? How can we get the Arab countries, the United States and the 27 to work towards a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian talks, and how can the European Union play a role when Jerusalem distrusts it?
The answer is that the situation has changed. Now that France and Great Britain have sided with Israel against Iran, and have done so together with the United States, the Israelis can no longer reject the Europeans. And Europe, France first, remains closer to the Palestinians than the Americans are. Provided it wanted to and is able to see the need, the Union would, in other words, be in a position to take the initiative in relaunching the peace process.
It could test some initial ideas by Arabs, Israelis, Palestinians and Americans. It could draw up the first broad outlines of possible compromises by seeking and finding convergence with the United States and the Arab countries on the borders of the future Palestine and the conditions of its coexistence with Israel. Because the European Union, the United States and the Arab League are all currently advocating a two-state solution, they could all, if necessary, put pressure on the Palestinians and the Israelis.
They could make the former understand that Arab and European financial aid will henceforth be conditional on progress in future peace negotiations. To the latter, they could say that US military support and the cooperation agreement between Israel and the European Union will now be linked to their degree of goodwill around the bargaining table. To the Palestinians and the Israelis, they could remind in three words that necessity is the law.
