Shaping Discourse and Setting Examples: Normative Power Europe can Work in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict

Abstract

The conventional wisdom in the literature on EU-Israel/Palestine relations is that the EU has only displayed very limited, if any, normative power in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Previous studies have focused on the ability, or rather inability, of the EU to diffuse any of the core norms behind Ian Manners' concept of 'Normative Power Europe' (NPE) into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while tending to ignore the ability of the EU to shape what is considered normal in many aspects of the conflict -either by making others adopt its policies, or by contributing to creating consensus around an issue. By using Tuomas Forsberg's framework of four different mechanisms of normative power: persuasion, invoking norms, shaping the discourse and the power of example on three important case studies from the conflict (EC/EU's declaratory diplomacy on the need for a just peace in the conflict, the Palestinians' bid for statehood at the UN in 2011 and the emerging 'differentiation strategy'), this article concludes that the EU has much more normative power in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than the literature has previously acknowledged.

The two-state impasse in Israel/Palestine—The EU caught between egalitarian norms and expansionist realpolitik

“…Other actors involved in the conflict, most notably the US, often followed the EU's example and adopted policies that the EU had been the first to outline. This development pointed to the EU's important normative role in the conflict, what has been referred to as "Normative power Europe" (See, for example Manners, 2002;Pardo, 2015;Persson, 2017). By the 1990s, the EU's positions had crystallized into strong support for a negotiated two-state solution based on democratic rights for both peoples in their respective nation-state, which the EU tried to achieve through various instruments.…”

Normative power Europe and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the EU’s peacebuilding narrative meets local narratives

“…The European Union (EU) is frequently described as a normative power in peacebuilding that projects its own experience, norms, and values as a liberal peace project externally (Tocci 2008, Diez and Pace 2011, Richmond et al 2011. The projection of the EU's normative power in peacebuilding has been particularly pronounced in the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Harpaz 2007, Gordon and Pardo 2015, Persson 2017. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict constitutes a longstanding priority of the EU's foreign policy agenda that has been reaffirmed in the EU's Global Strategy of 2016 and the EU has dedicated considerable time and resources to address the conflict (Pardo and Peters 2009, Musu 2010, Müller 2012.…”

“…Conversely, "issue narratives" are used by political actors to influence specific issues. Here, the EU's normative power discourse aims at facilitating shared meanings on key issues pertaining to a conflict and at normalising certain political positions by recourse to EU norms and values (see Persson 2017).…”