The EU has drafted a 10-point plan for a “credible, comprehensive solution” to the Israel-Palestine conflict, according to a draft document, seen by Euractiv, though securing EU member states’ and regional buy-in will be hard-fought,
Euractiv reports.
“In view of the current situation and despite the evident difficulties and uncertainties, the time to prepare for (a) comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace is now,” the draft document, as seen by Euractiv, says in its introduction.
The EU’s effort comes as the bloc’s foreign ministers on Monday (22 January) meet to discuss the situation in Gaza and its wider implications for the region with some of the key stakeholders in the region.
It outlines a series of steps that could eventually bring peace to the Gaza Strip, establish an independent Palestinian state, normalise relations between Israel and the Arab world, and guarantee long-term security in the region, according to the non-paper, prepared by the EU’s diplomatic service (EEAS).
The draft roadmap is meant to “elaborate, with practical proposals, on the agreed principle that only a political, sustainable, long-term solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will bring peace to the two peoples and stability to the region”, the EU’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell wrote in an accompanying letter to member states.
The EU’s Special Representative for the Middle East Peace Process, Sven Koopmans, has been conducting preliminary consultations with Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the League of Arab States, and other key partners, “to find common ground to revive the peace process”.
Koopmans also had proposed “to dedicate an ad hoc meeting to discuss this non-paper and those consultations” with EU member states’ officials “at the earliest opportunity”.
Before the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023, the EU had planned to help lead a new ‘incentives’-focused Middle East peace initiative, dubbed the ‘Peace Day Effort’, aimed at re-starting talks between Israel and Palestine.
A meeting in September in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly had gathered almost 50 foreign ministers from Europe and the Middle East, to develop it further.
However, with the Gaza war, those plans had to be put on hold.
Borrell in November had also laid out a draft framework for post-war Gaza, calling for no long-term Israeli occupation, an end to Hamas’s rule, and a role for the Palestinian Authority in running the territory.
