EU-Gaza mission on the beach
Gaza is very close to Europe, geographically. The Europeans were there for a very brief period of our contemporary history to help monitor the Rafah crossing point between Gaza and Egypt. Some still remain parked on the Israeli seafront waiting to engage again, eventually.
The EU Border Assistance Management (BAM) has been downsized to a minimum of 13 staff under Head of Mission, French Colonel Alain Faugueras, residing at the beach town of Ashkelon, on the southern Mediterranean coast of Israel. From May to December 2011, 1.4 million Euros has been blown on this suspended mission.
The headquarters of EUBAM-Rafah were always controversial, since the Europeans had to drive all the way around the Strip to monitor the entry of Palestinians to and from Gaza. To be precise, EUBAM-Rafah was overseeing the management of the Rafah crossing point (RCP) on the Palestinian side of the Philadelphi Corridor that separates Gaza from Egypt.
Leaving Gaza, a bus will take you the few hundred meters – or you can work across the open parking lot – to the equally rundown administrative building that serves as the Egyptian crossing point. Entering or leaving Egypt, there is no telling how long the bureaucratic process of getting a simple stamp will take – usually between 2-3 hours – as you wait in the dusty and smoky and dirty hall.
The Europeans were there to speed up this process on the Palestinian side. A new scanner machine was brought in, plus a conveyor belt from the Rafah International Airport (paid for by Europe and destroyed by Israel), as well as new booths to check and stamp passports.
In the summer of 2005, Israel was leaving the Gaza Strip and the Europeans were deploying a small but effective team of monitors to Rafah as part of the Agreement on Movement and Access (AMA).
The EUBAM-Rafah civilian mission was perhaps former EU High Representative, Javier Solana’s favorite baby within the nascent Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) apparatus.
The CSDP mission was deployed rapidly and considered an immediate success due to the incremental number of Palestinians passing daily between November 2005 and January 2006, but there was a catch. Like the headquarters, European engagement was doomed.
Ever willing to accommodate all parties to the conflict, the Europeans convinced the Palestinians to set up surveillance cameras within the Rafah crossing point. These cameras were linked in real-time to the Kerem Shalom crossing point in the south-east corner of the Gaza Strip.
From Kerem Shalom, the Israelis had final say on which Palestinians were allowed to enter and which were not. Alerted by a European liaison officer, the Palestinians manning the Rafah crossing would thus detain members of parties or withhold suitcases of money going into Gaza.
The Europeans were perceived – regardless of their impartial third party mandate – as being complicit in the detention of Palestinians by Palestinians, while also trying to fulfill Israeli security demands.
Reconciling both Palestinian demands for sovereignty and Israel’s security concerns has been and continues to be an impossible feat to complete for any third party involved in trying to resolve this perennial conflict.
Only a few months after increasing the EUBAM-Rafah capacity to over 80 staff, Hamas won the Palestinian election in late January 2006. The impartial position of the Europeans became difficult to prove as Israel increasingly called for the Rafah crossing to be closed for security reasons.
In June 2006, the militant branch of Hamas, al-Qassam Brigades, launched an attack on Kerem Shalom, killing two and kidnapping an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit. Over five years later, Shalit was released for a pending promise of over 1.000 Palestinian prisoners in return in October 2011.
The EU mission dwindled quickly after 2006 and was officially suspended in June 2007 when Hamas repelled Fatah’s attempt to take-over the Gaza crossings. By 2011, the Europeans were nowhere to be seen at the Rafah crossing or elsewhere within the Strip – except for the occasional foreign workers at UN agencies or one Frenchman at an archaeological site in central Gaza.
The loss of legitimacy as a third party for the European Union is simply astounding, but more worrisome is that with the ongoing siege of Gaza, the few remaining Europeans are still parked on the beach in southern Israel. European tax-payer money is going to pay people to do nothing!
This a great shame – not only for the lost opportunity of playing a positive role, (EUBAM could have been replicated positively elsewhere) but also for the extreme waste visited upon the Strip. The most severe and repugnant example is the raw sewage seeping into the Mediterranean – this middle sea shared most of all with Europe.
Stuart Reigeluth is Managing Editor of Revolve Magazine. This article was first published by EUobserver on December 13, 2011. Correction: The original text said Colonel Faugueras resides at Dan Gardens, when EUBAM-Rafah HQ is now in the center of Ashkelon.
Your article “EU-Gaza mission on the beach” contains inaccuracies and is far from reflecting the reality on the ground.
You say that “the Israeli had final say on which Palestinians were allowed to enter and which were not”. This is entirely false. During the overall deployment of the Mission, the Israeli authorities have not prevented any crossing of passengers neither by the use of cameras at the Rafah Crossing point nor by requesting the Palestinians to detain passengers or “stop bags”. The Palestinian authorities and the population of Gaza have always expressed their appreciation of the mission’s work.
You say that Colonel Alain Faugeras, the Head of EUBAM Rafah Mission, “currently resides at the beach resort of Dan Gardens”. On the contrary, one of his first purposes when he was appointed in November 2008 was in fact to move the EUBAM Rafah Headquarters from the Dan Gardens Hotel in Ashkelon to another location in Ashkelon. This was done in May 2009, two and a half years ago. Colonel Faugeras himself never lived in the Dan Gardens Hotel and rents an apartment near the EUBAM HQ as every other Mission member.
On 26 May 2011, the Council of the EU extended the mandate of the EUBAM Rafah Mission until 31 December 2011, as it has done several times in the past, in order to maintain an operational capability in the region. The EU has consistently insisted on the need for a full implementation of the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access. As third party mission, EUBAM Rafah is still present because it is invited to do so by the parties (Israel and the Palestinian Authority). The European Union has constantly tried to reduce the cost of the EUBAM Rafah presence either by downsizing the Mission or reducing the cost of its HQ.
The EU is currently assessing the implications of the opening of the Rafah Crossing Point on a permanent basis last May, and following closely the implementation of the Palestinian reconciliation agreement in this regard. So far, none of the stakeholders has formally requested the EU to reactivate EUBAM Rafah, but EUBAM Rafah has a redeployment plan to increase rapidly the strength of the mission in case the political and security conditions would allow.
Michael Mann, Spokesperson of High Representative / Vice President Catherine Ashton
The point of this article about the ‘EU-Gaza mission’ is to highlight that European efforts in Gaza have flopped and are currently stranded metaphorically ‘on the beach’.
The EUBAM-Rafah is indeed now based in the center of Ashkelon with a downsized international staff of 13 from a maximum of 84, led since November 2008 by Colonel Faugeras, but undeniably EUBAM-Rafah was based for three years at the Israeli beach resort of Dan Gardens.
From a logistical point of view, being based in Ashkelon is a waste of time, effort and money: international staff has to drive all the way around the Gaza Strip to enter through the Israel crossing of Kerem Shalom.
From a political perspective, being based in Israel sends the wrong message to the Palestinians and neighboring Arab countries, such as Egypt, particularly in this case, since the Rafah crossing is shared between Egypt and Gaza. Nowhere does Rafah border Israel. The EU-Gaza mission should be based in Egypt and/or Gaza, logically.
This leads to the point about Israel coordinating security from Kerem Shalom crossing. It is a fact that Palestinian officials were stopped from entering the Gaza Strip during EUBAM-Rafah operations and that their suitcases were withheld. It is not in the European mission’s mandate to carry out inspections – the Palestinians were doing that of course – under Israeli surveillance from Kerem Shalom. This is why the first thing Hamas dismantled in the Rafah crossing during confrontations with Fatah in the summer of 2007 were the surveillance cameras that were relaying in real-time what was happening within the crossing.
All this to say that European expertise is very much needed in training and improving the effectiveness of the Rafah crossing – not just on the Palestinian side, but even more so on the Egyptian side where conditions are unhealthy and the bureaucratic process legendary.
If the AMA is not to go in effect soon, which it most probably will not, then please do share the redeployment plan for an enlarged EU-Gaza mission. If not, prolonging a presence there is simply a waste of badly-needed European tax-payer money now.