Populism meets EU Foreign Policy: The de-Europeanization of Poland’s Foreign Policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

This article bridges between the de-Europeanization framework developed in this special issue and works on populism and party preferences to theorize about de-Europeanization dynamics and their potential drivers. Empirically, the article explores Polish foreign policy under the PiS government for the case of EU-foreign policy cooperation toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As a highly Europeanized foreign policy issue and longstanding EU priority, the Israeli Palestinian conflict constitutes an interesting case for the emerging research agenda on foreign policy de-Europeanization. When Poland joined the EU in 2004 the EU had already developed a joint approach on core issues related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is firmly rooted in international law and relevant UN resolutions. Whilst Poland’s support for the EU’s common approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been part of its wider Europeanization experience, we argue that under the Law and Justice government Poland’s policy has changed in important ways, showing signs of de-Europeanization. These changes have been driven by both, ideologically informed preferences of the Law and Justice led government as well as external expectations and pressures. In particular, its strong emphasis on transatlantic relations made the PiS government susceptible to expectations and pressures from the US, which under President Trump has increasingly departed from key parameters of the international consensus on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.