Quick takesThe third intifada; new, smaller Schengen; EU border patrol

Israel: New intifada only a matter of time – a very short time
There is a debate in Israel whether or not the daily attacks on Israelis by (mostly young) Palestinians wielding knives should be described as “intifada,” which will be the third intifada (the first one broke out in the early 1980s, the second one in 2000). The debate will soon be over, since it appears that Tanzim, the military wing of the Fatah movement, the largest faction within the PLO, is getting set to launch a broad intifada which will be similar in scope to the previous uprisings. Even moderate Palestinians, led by Palestinian Authority president Mahmud Abbas, have given up on reaching a meaningful deal with Israel while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ultra-nationalist/religious coalition are in power. Netanyahu has blocked efforts to reach a deal with the Palestinians, while continuing the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. The continuing settlement of Israelis on Palestinian lands will soon make the creation of a viable independent Palestinian state impossible. Palestinian sources say that the Tanzim has told Abbas that unless, within a short period of time, he is able to persuade the UN Security Council to declare that the Palestinians are entitled to a state of their own in the border that existed in June 1967 – and a Security Council vote would carry punitive consequences for Israel if Israel stood in the way of implementing the resolution – than a third intifada will be launched.

Europe I: Schengen is dead — long live new mini-Schengen!
The Schengen Agreement was signed thirty years ago, aiming to do away with internal European border controls while bolstering the Schengen area’s external borders. The Schengen zone includes twenty-two EU states (excluding the United Kingdom, Ireland, Cyprus, Croatia, Bulgaria, and Romania) plus Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. Hundreds of thousands of migrants moving freely from Greece through the Balkans into Central Europe made Schengen irrelevant. European officials, led by German policy experts, are quietly working on plans which would put an end to Schengen and replace it with a smaller border-free travel area. The new “mini-Schengen” will not include countries like Greece, which have shown themselves unable to protect their external borders, or Eastern European countries which refuse to accept refugees. People familiar with the plan say it will, in effect, divide Europe along cold war lines, with more distance created between the countries of western and northern Europe, on the one hand, and countries in eastern and south-eastern Europe – Hungary, Poland, the Balkans, Greece – in which liberalism, pluralism, and good governance are yet to take root, on the other hand.

Europe II: Trying to save Schengen
Under the Schengen Agreement, member states were responsible for protecting the EU’s external borders. The European Commission, in an effort to save Schengen and fight off attempt to redesign it (see story above), is proposing to create a European border patrol and coast guard to keep an eye on the EU borders. The EU already had doubts about the ability, or willingness, of Greece, Italy, and Croatia to control their own borders, and the flood of hundreds of thousands of migrants has proven these doubts. In September, EU president Jean-Claude Juncker first publicly called for the creation of a new EU border and coast guard force with broad powers. Today, 15 December, the European Commission plans to present its legislative proposal for the new border patrol force during European Parliament meetings in Strasbourg. France and Germany support the idea, but it is not clear whether the smaller countries would see the new border police as impinging on their sovereignty. The risk these smaller countries face is whether maintaining their sovereignty is worth the risk of finding themselves outside the new mini-Schengen, which Germany will insist on if the EU border patrol scheme fails to win approval.