The EU needs to admit that Trump has it right on Mideast peace

National Post, 16 September 2020

The U.S. president has brought a different set of lenses to the Arab-Israeli question.

Generals often prepare to fight the past war, but diplomats, too, can be locked into negotiating the peace of the past, rather than the present.

That was evident last week as the European Union foreign policy bureaucracy was aghast at agreements between Israel and Serbia and Kosovo. The latter two, in agreements signed at the White House, agreed to establish embassies in Jerusalem. Complications arose — as they always do in the Balkans — when Serbia subsequently said that if Israel recognized Kosovo as independent, the embassy move was off.

Leave aside how that will be worked out. The EU reaction bears noting. None of the 27 member countries has its embassy in Jerusalem, instead maintaining them in Tel Aviv, as Canada does. Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, which no European chancellery disputes, it having been established there some three millennia ago by King David. The prevailing thinking though is that until there is a peace agreement finalizing the Israeli-Palestinian borders around Jerusalem and the West Bank, embassies should not be in Jerusalem. It might, conceivably, threaten the peace process. In any case, the EU did threaten Serbia and Kosovo: If they moved their embassies to Jerusalem it would imperil their future admission to the EU.

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