The European Security Strategy (ESS) of 2003 emphasized the importance of a ‘secure neighbourhood’ and it characterized the resolution of the Arab/Israeli conflict as a strategic priority for the EU. Consequently, the European Neigbourhood Policy (ENP), as a political instrument, has been viewed as a partial operationalization of these objectives. One the one hand, the bilateral contractual relations of the EU with the conflicting parties, under the overarching framework of the ENP, are viewed as important potential sources of leverage with regard to the Middle East Peace Process.
Using a constructivist model of the EU as a neo-imperial and post-sovereign security community, the first part of the paper explores how Europeanization, integration and governance work as interrelated mechanisms of the EU’s structural foreign policy vis à vis its border regions. The second part of the paper focuses on the case of the Israel/Palestine conflict by identifying a number of political and institutional paradoxes with regard to the EU’s structural foreign policy vis à vis Israel and the PA and its strategic objective of conflict resolution in the Middle East.
