Europe and the Israel-Palestinian Peace Process: the Urgency of Now

The resolution of the IsraeliPalestinian conflict has long occupied a prominent place on the foreign agenda of the European Union (EU). Over the past 40 years, the member states of the EU have defined with increasingly coherence their approach to the resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: a commitment to Israel’s right to live in peace and security and support of the Palestinians to national self-determination. At the same time, European discourse on the Israeli Palestinian conflict has shifted as its own internal needs and strategic concerns have changed. This changing narrative has impacted critically on the policy instruments and approach adopted by the EU to the conflict. Through an analysis of European statements and speeches, this article argues that European discourse in the 1980s and 1990s was underscored by a normative, justice-based
framing. The collapse of peace process in 2000 has led to a noticeable securitization of European discourse on the conflict, one now marked by a
growing sense of ‘risk, danger, and urgency’ and a fear that the conflict has begun to impact negatively on its domestic stability.