Europe Divided Ahead of U.N. Palestinian Vote

LONDON - Spain has followed France in announcing it will support a Palestinian bid for enhanced status at the United Nations when the issue goes to a vote of the General Assembly.

Within hours, however, Britain indicated on Wednesday that it would abstain unless the Palestinians met its conditions for a “yes” vote.

After the announcements from Paris and Madrid, the Palestinians could have been forgiven for spotting an emerging consensus among the Europeans in favor of its bid on Thursday to achieve recognition as a non-member observer state.

But Britain's likely abstention served to underline the continuing divisions within Europe, some tactical and others fundamental, over how to advance the Mideast peace process. European governments remain almost equally divided over how to address the issue of upgrading Palestine's status. The United States has made it clear it will veto the proposal.

William Hague, the British foreign minister, said he was still prepared to vote in favor if he received assurances that the Palestinians would immediately return to the negotiating table with Israel and not attempt to use their enhanced U.N. status to pursue legal action against Israel for its conduct in the occupied territories.

There is nothing quite like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for highlighting the difficulties of achieving a common foreign policy among the 27 members of the European Union.

The divisions were apparent in a vote late last year in which 11 European states voted to allow the Palestinians to join UNESCO, the U.N.'s cultural heritage body. Five countries were opposed and 11 abstained.

Announcing Spain's intention to support enhanced status for the Palestinians on Wednesday, José Manuel Garcia-Margallo, the foreign minister, said Madrid would have preferred that the European Union vote together.

“Up to the last second we have been working to achieve consensus among the 27 member s tates,” he told Parliament. “It was not possible and we have had to take the unilateral option.”

Pro-Israeli stalwarts such as the Netherlands have said in advance that they will not support the Palestinian bid. Frans Timmermans, the Dutch foreign minister, said it would not contribute to the peace process.

As long-term Middle East-watchers are fond of remarking, the peace process is sadly all process and no peace.

But the failure of a long run of now almost forgotten initiatives to achieve a lasting peace, and the lack of a common position among the Europeans, has not deterred the Continent's leaders from insisting on a central role in attempts to resolve the conflict.

The European Union is one quarter of the so-far largely ineffectual Middle East Quartet. Non-E.U. Norway oversaw the Oslo peace process, and the 1991 Middle East peace conference was held in Madrid.

Since then, Europe has become the major source of the funds that prop up th e economy of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.

Following the latest round of Israeli raids against Gaza, the European taxpayer is likely to pick up much of the bill for putting the territory back together.

But, in spite of this diplomatic and financial commitment, Europe remains in, at best, a supporting role in the peace process amid occasional efforts to elbow its way to the front, as in the long-forgotten Venice Declaration of 1980.

The Palestinians have an interest in bringing Europe into the debate over issues such as U.N. status. On the broader issue of a comprehensive peace, Israel is insistent that only the United States is acceptable as the ultimate mediator.

Mr. Hague acknowledged the centrality of the United States when he told the British Parliament on Wednesday that he had urged Washington to launch a new peace initiative in the region.

Germany's Der Spiegel, writing in September ahead of the first statement by a preside nt of the European Council to the U.N. General Assembly, correctly predicted that Herman van Rompuy would avoid any new policy on Israeli-Palestinian peace for fear of stirring up European divisions.

The omission, on a central issue before the world body, the German weekly wrote, “shows how at odds the Europeans remain on the Palestinian question.”