The EU and the Palestinians: anticipating the third Intifada

So far, the EU’s response to the Arab spring has largely failed to address how to deal with countries where no regime change has taken place or where large-scale popular uprisings are unlikely to lead to revolutionary overhaul. The Palestinian Territories are a noticeable absentee.

This paper argues that this approach fails to see the structural and irreversible impact of the Arab uprisings across the entire region. Particularly, in light of the Arab spring’s potential spill-over effects to Palestine, it argues that a possible Palestinian uprising cannot be dismissed as a nationalist conflict unique to the Israeli-Palestinian context. When dealing with Palestine, it is imperative for the EU to learn from ongoing processes of change elsewhere in the region.