The EU: A Lesson for Israelis and Palestinians?

It is no wonder that an Israeli academic who specialized in European history would be asked to ponder the relevance of the European experience to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the way to solve it. In the press as in academic colloquia, the possible lessons to be drawn in the Middle East from Europe are debated as a matter of routine. When Barnavi served as the Israeli ambassador to France, he found himself facing this question time and again. A brief reminder of the European project might be necessary. Europe as a whole is an objective historical reality. Historians can follow the evolution of a unified European cultural space since the Middle Ages. On the ruins of the Roman Empire, the Church helped build a specific civilization--the Christian West, or the Occident--which was the first configuration of Europe.