Time for the EU to step forward

Geographical delusions are the fuel of confrontations and conflicts.

Take the Middle East: Israel has long deluded itself that it can define its borders by force; the radical element of the Arab world has deluded itself that borders are irrelevant since Israel can simply be eliminated; the US has deluded itself that the region can be controlled through US hegemony; while the EU, by its very detachment from events, seems to be under a constant delusion that the Middle East is somewhere near China rather than the area commencing on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean.

From the start of the current crisis - which began three weeks ago with the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier near the Gaza border and seriously escalated early last week with the abduction of two other Israeli soldiers on the northern border with Lebanon - there was a need for international intervention, to achieve a negotiated rather than a forceful outcome. It was slow to come, with the UN assembling a team towards the end of last week and the EU's Javier Solana visit to Beirut late on Saturday and a return to the region late on Tuesday this week.

The UN team has come up with some ideas, but does not have the clout to push them through, while Solana has appeared reluctant to take on any negotiating role, preferring to voice pessimism rather than to offer constructive advice or even criticism. This is an error on two counts.

First, the Middle East is very much in the EU's neighbourhood. Any crisis there, especially one as serious as the current one, affects more than the price of oil: it has a deep strategic significance. The unholy alliance of radical Islam, non-state actors and deeply disaffected populations in the region is a large, extreme and ever more violent mirror of that which exists in many parts of Europe. In the Middle East it is severely complicated by the Palestine-Israel conflict, but its core is the same. To ignore it there is to simply invite a delayed and much exacerbated version closer to home.

Then there is the Iranian angle: is it possible for the EU to recommend Iran to the UN Security Council for sanctions over its nuclear developments, at the same time as a variety of EU leaders and politicians are clearly pointing to the link between Iran and the Hizbullah - and yet suggest there are no strategic implications for the EU in the current fighting?

EU citizens deserve proper answers to these questions, not limp statements, which is so far what the Union has had to offer. This absence of substance may be the only excuse for the weakness of Solana's showing to date - he has had little to offer anyone in the region. But that is not good enough, and is the second error made.

If the EU is ever to have any clout in international affairs, now is the time. Apart from Israel, the US does not speak to any of the other parties to the current conflict - while the EU does. The UN may send envoys, but it does not have the strategic ability to negotiate, which the EU does, and NATO has no political capacity to negotiate and is also tainted by the US brush. If no single nation were to step up to the plate, this should be the time for the EU to take a lead role - but it has so far declined and will probably now end up taking a back seat yet again.

The ultimate irony of this situation is that if an international force of any kind is eventually assembled to enforce a ceasefire in southern Lebanon, its backbone will most probably be European. It is a pity that these soldiers will be sent in at the behest of their politicians, but without their leadership in negotiating their dangerous placement.

• Ilana Bet-El is an academic, author and policy adviser based in Brussels.

Geographical delusions are the fuel of confrontations and conflicts.