Recent Posts

Is the EU Adopting a Double-Standards Approach toward Israel and the Palestinian Territories? (Part 1)

[Lorenzo Kamel, Ph.D., is a Research Fellow at Bologna University's History Department and a Visiting Fellow (2013/2014) at Harvard University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies.] On the anniversary of the International Day of Human Rights (December 10^th) the European Parliament approved a four-year agreement with Morocco to allow European boats to fish in territorial waters off Western Sahara. The EU does not recognize Western Sahara as part of Morocco. Furthermore, the occupation of Western Sahara represents a violation of the United Nations Charter prohibition of aggression and forced annexation. Acting as a realist rather than normative power, the EU adopted an approach which contradicts some of its own policies applied in other contexts. This is particularly evident once that the fisheries agreement is analyzed in the frame of the recent (July 2013) EU guidelines barring loans (which constitute less than 10 percent of funds the EU allocates in Israel) to Israeli entities established, or that operate, in the territories captured in June 1967 (the “EU Guidelines”). The EU-Morocco deal applies not just to the area under internationally recognized Moroccan sovereignty, but to all areas under its jurisdiction, including the Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara. The EU Guidelines, on the other hand, apply to the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights: all areas under Israeli occupation. This inconsistent approach plays in the hands of some of the most active supporters of the occupation of the Palestinian Territories and represents a major blow for the EU's international credibility. Eugene Kontorovich pointed out for example that the positions adopted by the EU in its negotiations with Israel over grants and product labeling are inconsistent with those it has taken at the same time in its dealings with Morocco and the ones applied in contexts such as Northern Cyrus, Tibet, or Abkazia/Ossetia. According to Kontorovich, the EU approach regarding Western Sahara “is consistent with all prior international law […] the EU is right about Western Sahara – which means it is wrong about Israel.” [italics added] This post and its follow-up, which will be posted later today, argue that the EU is right about Israel and wrong about Western Sahara. Together, they discuss the EU approach to Israel-Palestine in a comparative way by first examining EU policy in Northern Cyprus and Western Sahara - two crucial cases often raised by critiques of EU policy towards Israel to highlight EU double-standards - before turning to the Israeli-Palestinian case itself in the second post.