The EU and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; an analysis of EU policy and securitization

Abstract

For decades the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has a prominent place on the foreign policy agenda of the European Union. Existing literature on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the EU underscores that the breakdown of the peace process around 2000 led to a shift in the European approach. This thesis investigates if securitization played a role in the changed policy of the European Union relative to the conflict. By analyzing this, the debate about the concept of Normative Power Europe is also discussed. In order to give a representative view, the EU documentation concerning the timeframe of three significant events before 2000 and four after 2000 was analyzed. The framework of securitization was applied on the texts. The results of the analysis indicated that security played an increasing role in the EU policies towards the conflict. It is questionable though if we can speak of a real securitization process because of, among other things, the lack of Europe’s concrete action in the conflict. The research also showed that that normative and security-based policy can be intertwined and that the EU’s economic interests played a significant role as well.