Open War... Mediterranean Europe

Nazi Germany was indeed defeated, but the victory of the Allied armies does not correspond to the victory of their states, with the sole exception of the United States. This is what the experience of the Suez War demonstrated, which ended with a single statement by the American president, to cite but one example among many.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was perhaps realistic in accepting the American nuclear security umbrella and the arrangements that came with it, while General Charles de Gaulle chose to bear the burden of an independent course for French policy, a course that reflected the suffering he had endured at the hands of the Allies during the war, namely the marginalisation to which he was subjected despite his exceptional politico-military role. Washington, for its part, offered no resistance to the French ambition and simply regarded it as a state wishing to exercise self-governance in the nuclear domain, nothing more.

In our part of the world, we construct the narrative of political independence on an amplified account of the role played by our struggling peoples in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, detached from the American perspective on the new world order and its crown jewel, the United Nations. In Europe, by contrast, the transformations were more visible: the decline of the empires that had once dominated the Mediterranean shores manifested with considerable clarity, as those same powers became Atlantic nations rebuilding their economies within the framework of the American Marshall Plan.

The European Union

The shared defeat, hunger and poverty of the continent's peoples made the period of mourning and enmity relatively brief. After West Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands took the initiative of founding the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951, a declaration that transcended the economic dimension and carried on its wing a mechanism of reconciliation grounded in shared economic interests, this foundation contributed to the success of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 through a long democratic process, paving the way for the European Union as we know it today: a union that developed its charters, internal treaties and relations with the world's states on a solid foundation of humanist thought rooted in international law, and equipped itself with the finest products of contemporary thinking across many fields, including the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership Agreement pertaining to our region.

Yet this renewed 'Mediterraneanism' does not correspond in absolute terms to what prevailed before the Second World War, all the more so as President de Gaulle had established a position opposing the Israeli aggression against Egypt, Syria and Jordan in the war of 5 June 1967, thereby opening wide the doors of France to the Arab world, overcoming the 'Suez moment' and bringing an end to the French colonisation of Algeria.

The Gaullist French stance in support of the rights of the Palestinian people produced a deep positive effect, helping Europe to return to a Mediterranean presence in the region within a framework of new and balanced criteria that did not negate Palestinian rights, while ensuring the protection of a State of Israel capable of defeating the Arab armies collectively when necessary.

The European Union was subsequently able to reformulate its collective and bilateral relations with the Arab states according to a modernist model and a vision of shared interests satisfactory to both parties, to the point where 'Mediterraneanism' appeared as a choice no less important than 'Atlanticism' or the options bound up with international groupings such as the G7, the G20, and so on. This dynamic is further reinforced today by the war unfolding between Iran, the United States and Israel on one side, and the fierce Iranian aggression against the Arab states, particularly those of the Gulf, on the other.

What is currently taking place in the Middle East, and its profound impact on the lives of the European peoples, is no less significant than that of the Balkan War before it or the still-raging war in Ukraine. Indeed, the widely acknowledged inability of the European Union to produce an independent solution to the Balkan crisis (Kosovo-Serbia) appeared with even greater force and clarity in its inability to independently manage the Ukraine-Russia crisis before it reached the catastrophic scene of today.

It can be said that Atlantic Europe is no longer able to persist under the sole bilateral equation of 'Europe-United States,' and that the peace the continent has enjoyed under the American umbrella cannot be considered firmly established, following a review of the outcomes of three wars: in the Balkans, in Ukraine and in the Middle East.

It is essential to undertake the reconstruction of Euro-Mediterranean relations on new foundations, foundations that incorporate a degree of European humility and a willingness to transcend short-term utilitarian policies, so as to build a balanced, participatory Mediterranean strategy that respects the interests of all peoples according to criteria free from double standards, given that a truncated peace is, at its core, no peace at all. This is precisely what the old continent has obtained, what it now complains of, and what it is attempting to remedy through its relations with the states of the Middle East.

If Europe wishes to preserve its role as the guardian of Western civilisation and culture, it must construct a new equation for world civilisation, not merely Western civilisation, and for a globalised culture open to the Mediterranean cultures that have harboured the foundations and origins of Western civilisation since first the Sumerian and Egyptian civilisations, rather than clinging to the unscientific belief in the Greek miracle.

Continental Protests

Under the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership Agreement and the duties and commitments it contains, the question of human rights, fundamental freedoms, the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary occupies the foremost position and acts as a gateway among the agreement's clauses with any country seeking to build a partnership.

Yet in political practice, one observes disparities that range between rigour and strictness in the application of these clauses and a leniency or flexibility that, in the Israeli case, reaches the level of outright indifference.

And if Arab protests may appear to lack credibility, the European protests emanating from certain states or from the popular level across the continent can hardly be dismissed on the same grounds, especially when accredited European and United Nations bodies have recorded in their reports published through the United Nations Human Rights Council widespread Israeli violations of international humanitarian law, forced displacement operations against Palestinians and Lebanese, systematic violations of human rights.. Along with the expansion of settlement, annexation and Judaisation of the occupied territories in the West Bank, the disregard for the ruling of the International Court of Justice in its characterisation of the 'genocide war' against the people of Gaza, and what is unfolding today in the visual landscape of the West Bank, whose streets and villages are being covered with Israeli flags and symbols so that Judea and Samaria, as they appear in the Torah, may seem as though Palestine does not exist.

Confronted with these shortcomings, and with the accumulating images of repression, death and bloodshed, a petition recently signed by more than one million Europeans explained how the Israeli government contravenes the core provisions of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership Agreement. And yet the European Union has taken no meaningful action in this regard, since condemnations and declarations fail to reach the ears of Israel's rulers, who openly vie with one another in killings, ethnic cleansing, displacement, annexation of territories and the use of disproportionate force, while employing water, food and medicine as weapons of war against the Palestinians of Gaza to this very moment.

The messages of more than 350 former diplomats, the objections of artistic and academic elites, and the memorandum of the 'seventy civil society organisations' have unanimously demanded that the European Union commit to a European foreign policy grounded in respect for international law, while warning against the continued maintenance of the Union's current relations with Israel despite these violations, which they characterise as complicity and a breach of its legal and moral obligations.

Given that the demand to suspend the Partnership Agreement between the European Union and Israel, and the demand for legal and economic measures such as a ban on trade with settlements, a review of military and scientific cooperation, the guarantee of international accountability for crimes committed and the protection of Palestinian civilians, have all become the demands of several European states, major recognised organisations and European elites in general, the European decision-maker is bound to review his calculations with precision, because the Mediterranean partnership that the continent urgently needs, more than ever and in the midst of the war raging in the Arab Gulf, must be a just Mediterranean partnership, built on the principles and criteria enshrined in the agreement itself. Only then can it be said that Europe's Mediterranean policy will genuinely contribute to extricating Atlantic Europe from its impasse.

Once again, the Mashreq welcomes Mediterranean Europe on these foundations and according to these criteria, and it is then that we will acknowledge it as the guardian of human civilisation and culture.