I set off for Jerusalem in some anxiety. I have returned in a state of despair. Time is no longer on the side of peace as far as that part of the world is concerned.

The conflict over the status of the Holy Land, holy to all three world faiths, has persisted through three distinct periods. The first, and longest, saw the State of Israel ranged against the whole of the Arab world. After four major wars, all of them won by Israel against the combined forces of her neighbours, Israel signed a peace agreement with Egypt and Jordan and, in 2002, the Arab peace plan effectively ended the state of war between Israel and the Arab world. The second phase was confined in essence to a stand-off between Israel and the Palestinians. That conflict, far less dangerous and less complicated for Israel, came close to being resolved ten years ago but, despite Bill Clinton’s best efforts and the concessions made by Ehud Barak, Yasser Arafat refused to sign at Camp David and subsequently at Taba. Since then the thunderbolt of 9/11 and the regional upheaval brought about by the insane Iraq war have propelled the ‘Palestinian question’ into a third dimension: that of a holy war waged by radical Islam against… everything that is not radical Islam – starting with the Jewish State.

This third phase is undoubtedly the most difficult and most dangerous. War waged in the name of Allah is uncompromising: no concessions are made by those certain that they fight for Truth and Good. Islamic fundamentalism means that there is widespread sympathy for the Palestinian cause throughout the Muslim world, with concrete help from fanatical movements backed by states which those movements support or threaten: Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc. Added to this there is Iran’s ambition to be the leading regional power through a combination of possessing nuclear weapons and exporting Shia Islam, with the tacit agreement of Syria which has never abandoned its ambition to regain control of Lebanon. For these combatants, Palestine is a ‘natural’ battleground, and likely to become the main battleground once the Americans withdraw from Iraq.

The fears of the Israelis, reeling from suicide bombings and rocket attacks against civilian targets, are therefore understandable. We understand why their leaders are seeking help from the international community to counter international faith-based terrorism and the nuclear ambitions of Teheran: France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and US President Barack Obama have spoken out very clearly against these threats. Less understandable is the failure of these same leaders to spell out any policy on Palestine.

Because it is, above all, in Israel’s interest that there should be a Palestinian state, as a natural home for all the region’s Arabs, starting with the families of the refugees of 1948: apart from anything else, the fast-growing Palestinian birth rate would very quickly endanger the Jewish majority which is the very foundation of the State of Israel. In the current climate, moreover, the need for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement has never been greater, in order to keep the religious fanatics away from the powder keg which is the main target of their fanaticism. That need is thus extremely pressing. All public pronouncements acknowledge this. On the ground, however, specific policy action ignores it and produces results that head in the opposite direction.

As far as the Palestinians are concerned the battle that needs to be won is the battle for the ‘hearts and minds’ of this nation, foes who must be made into friends. Who says so? Who is supposed to achieve this? Since the Oslo agreements of almost 17 years ago what specific measures have there been, apart from the many individual and admirable initiatives undertaken, to bring civil society in the two groups together, help them get to know one another and work together?

Protection against suicide bombings in the form of road blocks and protective walls was no doubt necessary. But the Kafkaesque system in which enclaves spawn further enclaves, whole roads are made impassable to a section of the population, daily life for tens of thousands of workers, schoolchildren, women and sick people turns into a nightmare of queues and arbitrary procedures has become a source of permanent humiliation for an entire people. Summed up by a sombre piece of graffiti chalked on the cement wall, which reads ‘one wall, two prisons’. Prisons which contain two peoples, one held in fear, the other in humiliation, to quote Dominique Moïsi in his remarkable The Geopolitics of Emotion.

By the same token, as Vice-President Joe Biden commented, you cannot claim to be working towards a ‘two-state’ solution and at the same time pursue a deliberate policy of establishing Israeli settlements with the manifest intention of cutting off East Jerusalem from all contact with the West Bank.

No one described the astonishing paradox created by the Gaza blockade better than Tony Blair when he commented that here we were punishing the good guys and helping the bad guys! It gives Hamas a total monopoly on political power. Traders and the middle class, who formerly prospered thanks to ties with Israel, are now ruined, and it is the Hamas militants who benefit by operating a profitable underground economy (underground in the true sense of the term!). Safe from any political competition, given a powerful propaganda boost by the blockade – like Castro – and relieved by us of the need to make local public services work (Europe pays the salaries) or the need to feed ‘its’ people (the UN provides funding for one million refugees), Hamas can happily get on with building an embryonic Islamic state between Israel and Egypt!

At the same time, the moderates in the Palestinian Authority were markedly weakened by their defeat in the 2006 elections. Apart from their control over Gaza, they lost quite a lot of their democratic legitimacy. There are nevertheless some solid foundations for the future. Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, an erstwhile IMF official, is a man of integrity, able and pragmatic. Thanks to European Union aid programmes an effective and independent police force has been established, to western standards, and a genuine civil administration has increased its power. Money from the diaspora is breathing surprisingly dynamic new life into Nablus, Ramallah and Hebron. The managerial class in politics and administration, nationally and locally, is of a high calibre, and female representation is on a par with our own. Barring general elections, which are of course, needed, the municipal elections scheduled for 17 June will provide a chance to confirm the legitimacy of the existing institutions.

This brings me to Europe. For twenty years now Europe has done nothing more in the region than wave its chequebook. We don’t do anything, we just give money. We give to help victims of the conflicts, we give to build things before they take place, and we give to rebuild them afterwards. We give above all to salve our own conscience, just as the colonel at the River Kwai rebuilt his bridge to save face. And like him we give, without realising that in so doing we objectively assume a share of the guilt: without necessarily meaning to we help indefinitely to sustain a situation that is intolerable in political and human terms. To take just one example, how can we explain the fact that 62 years on from 1948, millions of Palestinians are still living in UN refugee camps – where three successive generations clearly have not been raised in the unconditional love of the State of Israel… ?

The conclusion is not that Europe should stop giving aid. It pays enough, however, to entitle it to a say on the political issues, a major voice. And it now has a diplomatic instrument, in the person of Catherine Ashton in her role as High Representative. No one denies that the USA has a natural leadership role here, and we all hope that the ‘indirect negotiations’ headed by Senator Mitchell will prove successful. Whether or not that happens, it is time for Europe to demand a seat at the table. For Europe to insist that in return for the half-dozen or so miscellaneous agreements already concluded with Israel and the 600 million it has given in various aid packages to the Palestinians, the political undertakings given must be honoured. Europe must bring the full, joint diplomatic influence of its Member States to bear in the furtherance of this most important cause. And it must draw on the unique expertise it acquired in reconciling France and Germany to bring about peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Alain Lamassoure, 29 May 2010

The rescue plan adopted by the European leaders on 9 May of this year, as they teetered on the brink – history throws up these little moments sometimes – did not simply mark the beginning of the end of the financial crisis which had been rumbling on for nearly three years. It is now up to us to make the most of the unexpected boost it is giving to European solidarity by rolling out a new project which may prove every bit as momentous as that launched by the great Robert Schuman sixty years ago.

The Monnet method, enshrined at the time in the Schuman Plan, entailed the creation of a new dynamic in the form of very specific, de facto solidarities. The first step was to establish the European Coal and Steel Community, which entailed a pooling of the chief energy source and the most widely used raw material at the time. In essence, the plan of 9 May 2010 boils down to a new process of ‘financing pooling': the Member States of the euro area have pooled their borrowing capacities. The next step has to be a ‘budgetary pooling’. Because measured against the ever-greater powers given to the European Union by the treaties, and the ambitious plans its leaders are drafting as part of the Europe 2020 strategy, the EU has only a tiny budget, equal to 1% of the combined GDP of its Member States: this is 20 times less than the total value of all the national budgets together. Not having its own resources, the EU is funded by contributions from the Member States.

Member States, unable to control their own finances properly, are reluctant either to pay more into the communal pot or to allow the EU to raise funds that are not used directly for their benefit.

The new political climate brought about by the events of recent weeks prompts me to make two suggestions.

Firstly: now that the principle of European economic governance has at last been accepted, let us have the national parliaments involved right from the outset. Let us have, on the same date each year, a joint budgetary policy debate between the national parliaments and the European Parliament. This straightforward exercise will not be legally binding but will be hugely instructive. It will force all of us to work from the same economic assumptions regarding growth, interest rates, the value of the euro or the price of a barrel of oil. It will very naturally encourage each of us to demonstrate, to the national media and general public, that our national budget respects Community disciplines and helps to fund common objectives. It will break down the ‘glass walls’ which compartmentalise the European debate into 27 national debates, and it will help people to understand that a shared analysis of national budgets can lead to substantial and unimagined savings.

Secondly: the time has come to open up the debate on the scale of the European budget and how it should be financed. How should the tasks, and thus the resources, be divided between the national and European budgets? To be honest, this has never been discussed since the Treaty of Rome. It warrants the calling of a major financial conference, tasked with drawing up a budgetary charter for the Union. This is something which the next Belgian Presidency might undertake, along the lines of its predecessor in 2000, which set the wheels in motion for the European Convention.

Alain Lamassoure, 14 May 2010