Union woes
Two years ago, French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged the creation of the Union for the Mediterranean. The aim was to turn the Mediterranean into a sea of peace and prosperity, with all bordering countries cooperating economically, in promoting cultural exchange, and talking about common security. It seemed like a worthy cause, and it had the full backing of President Hosni Mubarak. But the Union for the Mediterranean was a no go from day one.
Instead of promoting cooperation across the Mediterranean, the union was stalled by the complexities of the Arab-Israeli conflict, held back by failure to stimulate the peace process, and blunted by Israel's far right policies.
The French were the driving force behind the union. Sarkozy and his government launched a major public relations campaign to make sure that every country bordering the Mediterranean -- and then some -- would join. The assumption here is that the union would act as a replacement for the Barcelona summit, which kept meeting for years without producing tangible results, neither for peace nor the economy of the countries involved.
Banking on his close relations with Israel, Sarkozy was hoping that economic cooperation projects between Europe and the Mediterranean would nudge Israel into a cordial system of neighbourly relations with the Arabs, thus paving the way to peace and political harmony. You'd hear Netanyahu making the same argument on occasion, saying that economic cooperation should be the catalyst for shared peace and security and contending that thorny matters -- such as borders, refugees and Jerusalem -- would be sorted out if all just focussed on the economy long enough.
In real life, it wasn't to be. Sarkozy's proposals were met with suspicion around the Mediterranean. Syria, Lebanon and Libya saw the union as a means of promoting Israel. And some powerful European nations -- led by Angela Merkel's Germany -- wondered about what the union would do to the unity and cohesion of the EU. Within the EU, a compromise solution was eventually found, with EU members given the option of joining as individual states. At present, 43 countries have joined the union.
The main problem facing the union, however, was Israel, a country whose presence in any regional forum has never failed to be disruptive. The union had to deal with the memories of Israel's invasion of Lebanon. It suffered from Europe's perceived inaction on the Palestinian issue. And it was shaken by the election of a Likud-led government that appointed as its foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, a known far right extremist who made derogative remarks about President Mubarak.
The friendship between Netanyahu and Sarkozy failed to rein in Israel's policies of aggression. As a result, the union's preparatory and ministerial meetings were postponed time and time again as Egypt sought to ban Lieberman from attending the meetings -- a quest Israel refused to humour. The union summit was supposed to gather in Barcelona in June, but it has been postponed after consultations among member states failed to smooth out existing differences. The politics, as usual, went wrong, and with it all hopes of serious economic cooperation.
If you ask me, we're just fooling ourselves. We cannot, now or ever, be partners to an economic and political drive that promotes Israel's interests while the Palestinians are left behind. The whole thing got off to an inauspicious start, and once Sarkozy leaves office -- which could be in two years from now -- the union will be just a memory.
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