Europe in the Middle East / Comment
France and the Middle East Crisis
24/04/2007 By Isabelle Birambaux
Six years after the Oslo peace process, negotiations over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have come to a complete halt.
Washington is losing its role as the key broker as there are some contradictory indications that some level of negotiation is possible but a revival of a peace process is still a far target.
There is an informal consensus that every conflict needs its own solution but that all of them, from Afghanistan to Syria have a connection. In this complex regional political framework, the role of external actors, as well as the interactions among them, could be decisive.
Could Europe play an active and different role from the one it has in the last decade as a fundraiser and secondary political actor? And, may France be a generator of the process?
French foreign policy has been marked by a long tradition going back to Charles De Gaulle and it has resisted the different political convictions of several presidents.
From interviews in Paris with French decision makers, journalists, and researchers, it seems that radical change is quite unlikely given France’s consistent political stance over the past decades.
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Keywords
EU Foreign Policy France Gaza Strip and West Bank Israel MEPP Middle EastBio author: Isabelle Birambaux
Isabelle Birambaux, born in Béthune (France) on 6 July 1970, has a Master's degree in political science and art history from the Technical University of Berlin. During her studies in Berlin, she specialized in international politics, analyzing nuclear politics after the end of the Cold War. Currently she works at the press agency Dow Jones and as a free-lance journalist.
