A priority for Europe, European defense (Daniel Cohn-Bendit)
Daniel Cohn-Bendit is MEP (green), president of the green group in the European Parliament
In the Middle East, day after day, the Palestinian territory is fraying. Is this the end of a dream
What is happening in Israel is absolutely dramatic. If Ariel Sharon's strategy of responding to terror with terror works, for many Palestinians it is the end of the dream of a clean state. Either the Israelis completely demoralize the Palestinians, leave territories without dynamism, without prospects, except poverty. Either this strategy will produce even more terror. And it won't work. There will be so many attacks that it will make the Israelis flinch. And everyone will lose, one way or the other.
Powerless Europe?
If someone had a method, it would be known… Europe is trying to maintain Arafat as an interlocutor. But that's more wishful thinking for now. The main problem is this strategy. Sharon feels freed from all constraint to finally be the Sharon who wanted to be Sharon. A Prime Minister to the right of the right. The only medium-term chance for peace is to renew a dialogue with Israeli society so that it finally wakes up. Sharon promises him safety. It's a dead end. We need help to peoples, in the plural. Because, for me, there are indeed two peoples, in danger.
In Afghanistan, Europe seems more committed, but some states still seem reluctant to go there under the common banner?
J'was for sending an American intervention. I am still in favor of sending an international interposition force, with a UN mandate to enforce order where this force is going to be established, and not just to protect UN personnel. The idea of a European response is very good. As for the national reluctance to plant its small national helmet on the European helmet, encountered in Laeken, I hope that we will be able to overcome these small... intellectual deficiencies.
European defense seems to have difficulty moving forward?
This is a priority for Europe on the condition of combining a prevention policy, to tackle conflicts upstream, and a defense policy, strictly speaking, to intervene in the conflict when we have failed before.
Interview by Nicolas Gros-Verheyde
Published in France-Soir, December 2001
