Is it possible that Israel will join the European Union?

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who was on an official visit to Israel, said Monday that his "greatest desire" is to see Israel join the European Union.

He wasn’t the first to think of that idea. Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief said last year that his organization's ties with Israel are stronger than those with candidate country Croatia:

“There is no country outside the European continent that has this type of relationship that Israel has with the European Union.

"Israel, allow me to say, is member of the European Union without being a member of the institution. It's a member of all the programs of the union, and participates in all of them. And I'd like to emphasize and underline, with a very big, thick line [that Israel participates] in [helping us deal] with all the problems of research and technology, which are very important."

"I am sorry to say, but I don't see the president of Croatia here," Solana continued, referring to Stjepan Mesic, who is also attended the three-day conference.

"His country is a candidate for the European Union, but your relation today with the European Union is stronger than [our] relation to Croatia.” The EU and Israel have committed themselves to establishing a partnership which provides for close political and mutually beneficial trade and investment relations together with economic, social, financial, civil scientific, technological and cultural cooperation. The Action Plan concluded with Israel has an objective to gradually integrate Israel into European policies and programs. Every step taken is determined by both sides. There is also a financial assistance element to EU-Israel cooperation - Israel is eligible for €14 million in European Community financial cooperation over the next seven years.

Seventy five percent of Israelis are interested in joining the European Union, according to a survey undertaken by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Israel. Quite a few leaders, including Benjamin Netanyahu, Silvan Shalom, Avigdor Lieberman and others, are also talking about Israel joining the EU in the future. Meanwhile, some in Europe itself, including Silvio Berlusconi in Italy and the Transnational Radial Party in the EU parliament, are engaged in a campaign for fullfledged Israeli membership.

However, the support for the notion of Israel joining the EU completely ignores the possible contradiction between Israel's essence as the Jewish State and the Jewish people's country, and the basic idea the EU is premised on turning the continent into an open ,united space, devoid of internal borders, where there is no significant difference between the citizens of member states. The fact that Israel is a democratic, liberal country where humanistic universal values are part of the local spirit (although some may argue otherwise) does not change the Jewish State's reality and aspirations.

Israel is defined as a Jewish State and the Jewish people's country, which is radically different than other countries. This essential difference could prevent it from joining the EU, even if it were invited to join it. On the other hand, for a majority of Israel’s population, renouncing its uniqueness is akin to abandoning Israel's "raison d'etat".

It is easy to provide concrete examples, such as the contradiction that exists between the Israeli Law of Return, which enables any Jew from any place in the world to get an immediate citizenship, and the freedom of movement of people in the European Union. Israel's aspiration to constitute a central element in the prosperity of the entire Jewish nation is also incommensurate with the values of the European Union and its institutions. In terms of the political reality, as EU Commissioner for External

Relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner explained, Israel is not perceived by official institutions as a candidate for joining the EU in the foreseeable future. Instead, it makes do with membership in the "European Neighborhood Policy," which aims to bring all Europe's new neighbors closer to the EU. Israeli aspirations and hopes to join the EU have serious difficulties both in terms of values and political reality.

A lot of people claim that there can be no such thing as a Jewish and democratic state. Either it is Jewish” or it is democratic. No doubt it is tough question to ask. But if the answer to the question is no than Israel has no right to exist in its current form.  Surely Israel can be a democratic state where most of its residents have some awareness and some connection to their Judaism, but if its laws and definition discriminate against the rights of the Arab minority than it surely cant join the European Union. The question if Israel can be a Jewish and democratic state is not only vital to its existence but also is essential for any attempt of Israel in joining the European Union. Surely universal democratic principles do not require the denial of the right of the Jewish people to self-determination.

Over the last few years, the theory that there is an irreconcilable and fundamental contradiction between democratic values and the definition of Israel as a Jewish state has enjoyed important expressions of support from representatives of different academic disciplines including sociology, political science, law, philosophy, geography, and history.

Israel’s Law of Return, which welcomes Jews from all over the world to become citizens of Israel, is often cited by these critics as a glaring example of Israel’s inadequate democracy. However, in fact, as Israel’s laws of “kin repatriation” differ little, if at all, from those of many European states. Indeed, critics of the Law of Return and, more generally, those who question the fundamental soundness of Israeli democracy have interpreted the expression “the Jewish state” in far-reaching, highly negative ways.

They see the very definition of the state as a Jewish state as inherently an anti-egalitarian, alienating factor. And they doubt that it can sustain a properly functional liberal democracy. There is a storng objection to the concept of Israel as “the State of the Jewish People.” It argues that such a concept requires that the state belong to the Jews of the world, even if they are not its citizens. However, the weak point in these arguments is that there is neither need nor justification to interpret in this fashion a term whose only purpose is to point to Israel as the fulfillment of the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own.

According to modern democratic principles, national identity is self-legitimizing. Therefore, there should be no democratic shortcoming in Israel continuing to be the nation-state of the people whose right to self-determination was the reason for its creation.

Tension between values, in and of itself, is no indication that one of the competing values is illegitimate and ought to be given up. In fact, the European Union itself deals with the tension between the value of multiculturalism and many of the values of modern democratic liberalism.

The Jewish and democratic character of the state can create tensions and practical dilemmas. But this does not mean that it must choose one of these two values and reject the other one. If Israel neglects its democratic values than it has no place in the European Union.

As mentioned above, he Law of Return, a central component of the Jewish character of the State of Israel, is focus of much of the controversy over the Jewish nature of the Jewish state. Its critics accuse it of being discriminatory and antidemocratic.

But the Law of Return does not discriminate between citizens within the country. It does not make the citizenship of non-Jews in any way inferior. Rather it is directed entirely outward, to the Jews of the world. Therefore, implicit in the condemnation of the Law of Return is the assertion that Israel is forbidden to privilege Jews in its laws of immigration and citizenship. However, there is no basis in international law for such a criticism. In fact, it contradicts the practice of quite a large number of democratic states.

Once we recognize Israel as the national home of the Jewish people and as the realization of its right to self-determination, we cannot deny it the right to open its gates to members of that people. The Law of Return is a law of repatriation.It is the right of a nation-state to grant preferential treatment in matters of immigration and acquisition of citizenship to members of its own ethnicity who are citizens of other countries.

This norm is common and well-recognized in democratic Europe. In 2000 there was a law passed by Hungary that conferred certain economic privileges on ethnic Hungarians who are citizens of neighboring states. Romania complained to the Venice Commission, asserting that this law infringed Romanian sovereignty since it conferred privileges on certain citizens of Romania without prior agreement by the Romanian state and created inequality between Romanian citizens.

The decision by the Venice Commission recognized the relationship between ethnic-cultural minorities and their kin-states as legitimate and even desirable. It noted favorably the growing tendency of kin-states to concern themselves with the protection of rights of the ethnic cultural groups with whom they share these ties, The decision cites the agreements between Italy and Austria from 1969, signed with international support, that secured the rights of the German-speaking minority in Tyrol. The commission also cited the agreements signed in recent years between various Eastern European countries and between those countries and Germany.

Various all-European documents, including the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, encourage countries to negotiate arrangements regarding protection of the status of national minorities.All of these international agreements are based on the assumption that nation-states may have a legitimate interest in the fate of those it sees as members of its own ethnic-cultural people who live outside its borders.

In the 1950s the Germans expanded the right to automatic citizenship to include not just refugees and displaced persons, as provided in their constitution, but also any person of German extraction from the USSR and the nations of Eastern Europe. This applied to a large population of ethnic Germans living in those areas for hundreds of years, without any civic or geographic connection with the modern German state.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the law was revised so that the eligibility for citizenship was limited to emigrants of German extraction from the former Soviet Union. Germany’s current policy toward ethnic Germans in other Eastern European states is to encourage them to remain where they are and to assist them in preserving their German culture. It is, of course, important to stress that the Federal Republic of Germany is a distinctively liberal democratic state.

Moreover, in all the decades since its enactment, a half century in which Germany’s laws of repatriation granted citizenship to millions of immigrants of ethnic German extraction, along with considerable financial benefits, the laws of repatriation have never been challenged in the European Court of Human Rights.

I have my doubts regarding the Lisbon Treaty and its non- democratic natue and of course the common currency, the Euro, is a big problem beside the Lisbon treaty but as I wrote in 11 Big Surprises for The Next Decade, and in The Euro Crisis- Budget Cuts Are Doomed To Fail, I don’t expect the Euro to stay for much longer.

On the other hand, as a Libertarian I admire the Europeans for succeeding in creating a world where there are no boundaries among all EU countries, no passwords or visas, and there is easy travelling and the possibility for any European to move to any member country and find a job everywhere in a membership country.

The free transfer of goods, the freedom to provide services, and free transfer of capital are all beneficial to all the member states. The EU economy would open the EU borders into Israeli products and the Israeli market would open to the products of other European countries. This should lead to more competitive market and lowering the prices.

One can of course interpret the law of return and Israel’s definition as a Jewish state in a non democratic matter. Israel’s society is in constant tension regarding its own definition the Jewish State, and there are Israelis who by no doubt interpret the definition of a Jewish state in way that is not in line with Western Democratic values.

An acceptance in to the European Union will be a victory for those fighting that Israel will remain democratic.