Jimmy Carter may have been a conspicuously unsuccessful president but he has proved to be a highly successful former president. The opinions of this fundamentally decent man are listened to with respect. Thus his view that the Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations are a “dead issue” will have had a worldwide impact. Speaking this week on a visit to Israel, he said that because Benjamin Netanyahu had made it abundantly clear that he would have no truck with an independent Palestinian state, all further talks were a waste of time. He also pointed out that because Washington had failed to use its considerable influence to bring to heel Israeli Zionists and their formidable lobby on Capitol Hill, America's standing in the Middle East was at an all-time low.
But Carter strongly suggested a new course of action. He said that European countries could now play a bigger role. This should include, he said, the recognition of Palestine. In recent years, European legislators have demonstrated increasing impatience with the obdurate position of the Israeli government. As the hawkish Netanyahu negotiates the formation of what is likely to be his country's most right-wing and inflexible coalition, it is becoming clear that Europe can no longer sit on the fence.
Legislation to clamp down on Israeli goods produced in the occupied territories is being finalized. Some European parliaments have passed symbolic votes recognizing Palestinian rights. But it is time to go far further. The EU and its individual member states need to move to a formal recognition of a Palestinian state. And this should happen sooner rather than later. In the twilight of the Obama presidency, there is little appetite to see off such a decisive European action. However, whoever wins the White House next year is likely to try and reset the strained relations that have built up between the US and Israel. That would almost certainly mean an attempt to head off European Palestinian recognition.
In this respect, the current French initiative to have the United Nations Security Council produce a resolution firmly setting the parameters to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict carries a risk. While admirable in one way, there is a clear danger that it will encourage European leaders to continue to shuffle the challenge away from their own chancellories. At the very least, the French initiative should be running in tandem with a wider move by European states to recognize Palestine.
Despite pressure from their own parliaments and in the EU parliament itself, European leaders are still leery of full-blooded involvement in the enduring Palestinian tragedy. There is no clear agreement and no joined-up thinking. This disarray is being exposed by the incoherent response to the flood of migrants currently launching itself into the Mediterranean to be picked up by EU patrol boats. The horror at seeing more lives lost - 950 migrants drowned in a single disaster last month - is matched by an equal panic in the face of the challenge of housing these refugees. Up to a million more, largely sub-Saharan migrants, could seek to make it to Europe through Libya before the year is out.
European leaders must not use the migrant crisis to divert attention from the far greater 70-year disaster that is the fate of the Palestinian people. It is time for Europe to find a single voice and use it to announce the recognition of a Palestinian state.
