Lapid must keep eyes open when dealing with EU - editorial

Just two weeks before Benjamin Netanyahu was to take office, Solana said that if Netanyahu showed he was committed to establishing a Palestinian state, the EU “will be ready to do business as usual, normally, with a government in Israel that will continue talking for a two-state solution. If that’s not the case, the situation will be different.”

That paternalistic, do-what-we-say-or-else tone was counterproductive – especially with Netanyahu – and marked the beginning of a period of deterioration in ties between Jerusalem and Brussels that culminated six years later when Israel suspended its diplomatic dialogue with the EU because of the latter’s decision to label products from the settlements. 

Fast forward to July 2021, and Israel again has a new government. This time, however, it has a prime minister and a foreign minister more positively predisposed toward the EU.  Prime Minister Naftali Bennett understands from his days eight years ago as economy and trade minister the importance of economic ties with the EU, and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid is keen on demonstrating that Israel’s values are the same as those of Europe’s liberal democracies. 

In that regard, the EU’s current foreign policy czar Josep Borrell did well in not taking a page out of Solana’s playbook: he met Lapid in Brussels on Sunday with a friendly, non-threatening, message. 

“The visit of the new Foreign Minister represents a fresh start in the relations with the Israeli government and an opportunity to have a comprehensive and forward-looking discussion on issues of common interest,” he wrote in a statement after the meeting. 

Lapid is also interested in a “fresh start,” as indicated Monday by his meeting with the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council – the first Israeli foreign minister to do so in years. Unhappy with the degree to which Israel cozied up under Netanyahu to “illiberal” democracies in Europe like Hungary and Poland, Lapid is looking to positively recalibrate Israel’s relations with Brussels. 

As Lapid said the day after he took office, “it’s time to change, to improve, to deepen the dialogue between Israel and Europe.”

While this effort to push the restart button with Brussels is laudable, Lapid needs to do it with eyes wide open. 

Although he may be seen in certain European capitals as representative of a more “enlightened” Israel than the one Netanyahu represented, countries like Ireland, Sweden, Belgium, Luxembourg, Spain and even France are not all of a sudden going to take a more nuanced and balanced approach toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

These countries, as well as others, have driven an EU policy emanating from Brussels that was for years tilted strongly in favor of the Palestinians. Brussels long ago decided that the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was a full Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 lines and the division of Jerusalem, and that all that was left to do was to negotiate how exactly to get there. Petty issues like Israeli security concerns or Jewish historical rights were just meddlesome obstacles.

The EU traditionally has been as heavily tilted toward the Palestinians as the Trump administration was heavily tilted toward Israel. The difference is that while Trump’s favoritism was widely seen as a justification for the Palestinians not being willing to deal with the administration, few outside of Israel would say that the EU’s lack of balance disqualifies it from a central role in the diplomatic process. 

When Lapid went to the UAE last month he publicly thanked Netanyahu for what he did to bring about the Abraham Accords. That was a gracious step that demonstrated he realized that not everything Netanyahu did needed to be scorned nor overturned. 

Lapid should now adopt a similar approach toward the EU.

Yes, it is good and positive that Israel wants to turn a new page and build a more constructive relationship with the 27-member EU. While doing that, however, Lapid would be wise not to dismantle sub-alliances Netanyahu managed to build up inside the EU – primarily with the 11 eastern and central European states that joined the union since 2004, and who have moderated the reflexively hyper-critical positions toward Israel that came out of Brussels when people like Solana, Catherine Ashton, and Federica Mogherini were calling the foreign policy shots.