About: Palestine

Israel’s natural gas windfall in Europe is bad news for Palestinians

Massive capital flows toward Israel and its increased strategic importance in Europe’s rush to acquire independence from Russian fossil fuels will translate into a new geopolitical balance in the Middle East, writes Joseph Dana. 

Unity of Palestinian groups: What the EU should do

The EU can play an effective role to achieve the main objective which is the two-state solution. Initially, it should recognise Palestine based on the 1967 borders and condition it with disarming Hamas, writes Hamid Bahrami.

Israel needs good relations with Europe

Israel has a vested interest in a strong European Union. It needs European partners in order to maintain its Zionist vision of a Jewish state. But Europe is losing interest in the Middle East peace process and Israel itself is not helping matters, warns Nitzan Horowitz.

Beyond labelling: How Europe can save the two-state solution

The EU Foreign Affairs Council last month reaffirmed its policy of differentiating between products made in Israel, and those produced in settlements. By so doing, it upheld the principle underpinning in its labeling guidelines of November 2015, writes Mousa Jiryis.

Why EU guidelines on Israeli settlements are welcome

EU guidelines on the "indication of origin of goods from the territories occupied by Israel since June 1967" are a long overdue step forward, writes MEP Alyn Smith.

EU decision to boycott settlement products will hurt Palestinian jobs

The EU decision to adopt new labeling on Israel's settlement products is perceived as an act of discrimination which will not help the diplomatic process, writes Yossi Lempkowicz.

Revitalising the Middle East Quartet post-Blair?

As the Middle East Quartet comes back to life, the EU must allow its member states to play an active role in the informal international group, to promote peace in the region, writes Nimrod Goren.

Challenges for EU soft power in the Middle East

Diplomacy and development are the foundations of the EU’s influence in the world. But they can only be effective if we truly understand the cultural and political landscapes of the countries we are trying to influence, writes Hans Gustaf Wessberg.

Spreading ripples of hope from Europe to Palestine

Four national European parliaments have already voted to recognize Palestinian statehood. It's time the European Parliament does the same, Ilan Baruch writes.

I hope MEPs will join me in voting to recognise Palestine

A legally binding vote to unconditionally recognise Palestine is the very least the EU can do, writes Keith Taylor.

An unsustainable refugee crisis

Few issues polarise public opinion more than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Whether it's Europe, or the United States, the problem is the same. One of the main reasons why is the ongoing crisis of what to do with the descendants of the 700,000 plus refugees, created by the first Arab-Israeli war, in 1948. Spread around the world, their numbers today exceed 5 million.

Why the EU should reject Israeli trade pact

A few might argue that signing the the Conformity Assessment and Acceptance Agreement with Israel will bring economic benefits to the EU. In fact, the EU has much more to gain from rejecting it, argue Kataryzna Lemanska and Stuart Reigeluth.

What happened to the state-building project in Palestine?

The recent World Bank report which draws a bleak picture of Palestinian state building projects reveals the real problem which is the absence of political objectives behind those initiatives, argues Dimitris Bouris.

EU must support viable Palestinian state

The EU must make peace between Israel and Palestine one of the top priorities of its Middle East policy. But there can be no peace in the region without a viable Palestinian state, argues Eberhard Rhein.

Palestine/Israel: Time for donors to remove roadblocks

Although the world's attention is fixed on the Arab Spring, human rights abuses continue in the Palestinian territories and the EU should consciously use its aid policy to push for an end to the blockade of Gaza and a moratorium on settlement construction in the West Bank, argues Chris Bain of CIDSE.

‘Palestine Papers’ bear the failure of US as mediator

The leaked 'Palestine Papers' on concessions offered to Israel show the failure of the US as principal mediator and give the EU an opportunity to step up its role in peace talks, argues Spyros Danellis MEP, a member of the European Parliament's Palestine delegation, in an opinion piece sent exclusively to EURACTIV.

Israel-Palestine: Peace this time?

The news that Israeli-Palestinian talks are to resume should not lead to over-expectations as to their outcome, warns Shlomo Avineri, director-general of Israel's Foreign Ministry under Yitzhak Rabin's first cabinet and professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Gaza’s hell : Why the EU must change its policy

"The EU has to restructure its failed strategy [in Gaza] and seek to bring the new US administration to a similar re-appraisal and policy change," argue Michael Emerson and Richard Youngs, associate senior research fellows at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), and Natalie Tocci, senior research fellow at the Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome, in a January CEPS report.

Conflict Resolution in the Neighbourhood: Comparing the Role of the EU in the Turkish-Kurdish and Is

The aim of this paper, written by Nathalie Tocci and published by the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), is to compare the manner in which the Union’s bilateral relations have affected two key conflict areas in its neighbourhood: the dispute between the Turkish state and the Kurds, and that between Israelis and Palestinians. The two conflicts differ significantly, as do the Union’s relations with the parties.

A Time to Lead: The International Community and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS Despite repeated attempts by the international community, efforts to end the devastating cycle of violence in the Middle East have thus far failed. Israelis live in constant fear of the next suicide attack, Palestinians live under...