Europe’s Middle East Dilemma: The Quest for a Unified Stance

Soon after the European Summit in 1969, when the member states of the European Economic Community first met to achieve "European political cooperation," the Middle East conflict was adopted as the first foreign policy issue around which to form a consensus. In this book, Drs. Greilsammer and Weiler analyze the principal landmarks in the evolution of a unified European stance toward the Middle East conflict, placing events in the context of the contemporary political and economic circumstances. Among the events they review are: the November 1973 declaration recognizing, for the first time, "the legitimate rights of the Palestinians"; the London declaration of June 1977 establishing the Palestinians' right to a homeland; and the Venice declaration of 1980 affirming the Palestinians' right to self-determination and the necessity of PLO participation in the peace process. Finally, the authors offer a theoretical scheme for the study of European political cooperation and consider the implications of a European foreign policy toward the Middle East independent of that of the United States.