How the Mediterranean’s most hopeful UN green organizations fail at peace-building

Arab normalization resistance — unchallenged by EU and UN bodies — ensures they remain politically sanitized and technically shallow.
The Mediterranean cannot solve climate change, migration pressures, or food insecurity if it continues to sideline the very countries with the expertise to contribute. And the more the UfM, the EU, and UN bodies appease political vetoes, the more they reinforce the exact divisions they were created to heal.

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The Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) was created to be the great bridge between Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East — a place where shared challenges like climate change, water scarcity, youth unemployment, and clean energy could be tackled together.

Instead, the UfM has become a textbook case of consensus paralysis: a structure where 43 countries must agree before anything moves forward. In practice, this means that the long shadow of the Arab–Israeli conflict still shapes what can be said, who can be present, and which countries are allowed to lead. For an institution whose sole purpose is regional cooperation, the result is tragically predictable: the Mediterranean’s biggest tools for healing rifts are the ones most consistently left unused.

Below are recent, documented examples of how Arab political pressure — often reinforced by the EU’s own risk-aversion and the UN’s quiet compliance — creates sins of omission that undermine progress in women’s empowerment, climate cooperation, cleantech, and cultural diplomacy. I’ve even seen it in forest fire prevention.

I have reached out to the spokesperson and leadership at the UfM about their exclusionary practices, which I touch on below. Nasser Kamel, a general from Egypt who heads the organization didn’t reply. His spokesperson answered the phone but then refused to send feedback about the exclusionary policies we pointed out. Green Prophet then received this:

“The participation of representatives, experts, and citizens from any Member State, including Israel, in UfM activities is at the discretion of the respective national authorities and stakeholders. As an intergovernmental organisation, the UfM does not have the mandate to compel participation although it actively encourages and welcomes the engagement of all its members in its initiatives. There is no pattern of exclusion in either pre-activity communications or post-activity follow-ups related to water or any other sector. Israel is an active and engaged Member State that regularly participates in UfM Senior Officials Meetings as well as UfM Regional Platforms and Working Groups focused on water policy dialogue and related initiatives in the Mediterranean.”

This is the pattern in groups like this. Nice words, but they practice something else entirely. As someone who works in cleantech, and as a champion for women and the environment in the region I couldn’t help but notice exclusionary policies to Israelis. They may be “there” on paper but the reality is something else.

Case Study 1 (2023–2024): Women & Climate Leadership Without Israelis
UfM officials regularly state that “women, youth, and climate” are the safest and most promising spaces for Euro-Mediterranean cooperation. Yet the institution’s own events tell a different story. Across the Women4Mediterranean, Women Innovators, Climate Adaptation, and Women Entrepreneurs conferences held in Barcelona, Cairo, and Brussels (2023–2024), not a single Israeli woman innovator or climate leader was featured on panels or in official delegations. They will publish data that will not include Israeli women.

This is despite Israel being:

• A global top-tier country for women in STEM
• A regional leader in climate adaptation, water reuse, and desert agriculture
• Home to Arab-Jewish women-led climate ventures that embody the cooperation the UfM claims to champion. The Arava Institute is a prime example.

Women’s innovation is the softest of soft diplomacy tools — the very space where the region should be building trust. Yet because a handful of Arab governments routinely reject anything that looks like normalization, the UfM quietly complies. This is the politics of omission, which is harder to expose than outright exclusion, but just as damaging.

The excuse: Muslim Arabs, a majority by far in the region, don’t feel comfortable around Israelis. Israeli Arabs are invited through a back door when they register as Palestinians. Read below to how it’s been perfected.

Case Study 2 (2022–2024): UN Bodies Reinforcing the Same Patterns

The UN’s regional arms — especially ESCWA, but also UNDP and FAO in the Gulf — hold major climate, cleantech, and development gatherings in Doha, Dubai, Cairo, and Riyadh. And the pattern repeats: Israeli experts are excluded, or invited only as “online observers.” Joint research groups are formed that include Arab states and European academics, but not Israeli institutions — even when the topic is water scarcity, desalination, agriculture, or desertification, where Israel is a global leader.

Behind closed doors, European officials will admit the reason: “We avoid confrontation. Arabs would walk out.” In other words, UN bodies — which preach inclusiveness — reinforce the same consensus paralysis as the UfM.
Again, the tools for healing rifts exist — and they are deliberately not used.

If you see the front page of ESCWA’s website they are calling the Hamas-Israel conflict, started by Hamas “a War on Gaza.”

Palestine is intentionally framed as a regional development priority, while Israel is framed as irrelevant — except as a geopolitical antagonist. Here is a UN-funded Med conference that paints Israel as a villain.

Case Study 3 (2020–2023): Cleantech, Climate Finance & Qatar’s Influence

Many UfM and EU-Mediterranean climate programs are now co-funded or co-branded with Gulf partners (Qatar Foundation, Masdar, ADQ, Saudi Green Initiative, etc.). These sponsors bring money — but also political red lines. The last meeting was in Doha, Qatar. Why are Mediterranean peace and climate leaders meeting in the Gulf?

High-visibility participation of Israelis, they will say, becomes “too sensitive.”

EU-backed research networks omit Israeli nodes even when the science requires them (e.g., micro-irrigation, solar thermal storage, grid-stabilizing technologies). This is not an accidental oversight. This is structural. Arab sovereign wealth funds are now key financiers in Mediterranean climate cooperation — and they leverage their position to enforce old regional politics inside ostensibly neutral EU frameworks.

Case Study 4 (2020): COVID-19 Recovery Programs Without Israeli MedTech
During the COVID-19 recovery period, the UfM launched major programs for digital health, medtech, and emergency response.  Yet none of its flagship recovery initiatives visibly integrated Israeli: Remote diagnostics, AI health systems, First-responder innovations, Arab–Jewish hospital cooperation models. Israel’s medtech sector could have been a perfect bridge — especially for women in health, startups in the periphery, or cross-Mediterranean humanitarian partnerships.

Instead, the UfM defaulted to the lowest common denominator: keep it technical, keep it vague, avoid political discomfort so the Arab world and natural gas and oil money stays happy.

Why This Matters Now

The tragedy of consensus paralysis is not simply that Israelis are marginalized. It is that the region loses access to the best available tools for peacebuilding:

• Women’s entrepreneurship
• Climate adaptation
• Water reuse
• Digital health
• Desert agriculture
• Cleantech innovation
• Youth exchanges

These should be the spaces where cooperation flourishes beyond politics. Instead, Arab normalization resistance — unchallenged by EU and UN bodies — ensures they remain politically sanitized and technically shallow.
The Mediterranean cannot solve climate change, migration pressures, or food insecurity if it continues to sideline the very countries with the expertise to contribute. And the more the UfM, the EU, and UN bodies appease political vetoes, the more they reinforce the exact divisions they were created to heal.

The call mechanism for inclusion is broken

One way EU and UN organizations exclude Jewish Israelis, and I see this all the time in areas of cleantech and eco-events, is by limiting “eligibility” to Palestinians, not Israelis, by defining participants through population categories, not citizenship. And this is what you will find.

Many calls for participation use criteria such as:

• Arab youth
• Women from the Arab region
• West Asian populations
• Participants from conflict-affected Arab communities
• Stakeholders from the State of Palestine

Because Israeli Arabs (Muslim or Christian) share language, culture, and geographic identity with Palestinian populations, they technically qualify for these categories. But Israeli Jews — even if regionally relevant, even if experts in the exact domain — do not qualify.

Calling for Arabs from the region, it allows organizers to include “Arab citizens of Israel” without acknowledging Israel as a state; claim inclusivity (“we included Arab voices from the region”); avoid dealing with Israeli ministries, embassies, or universities; preserve the diplomatic fiction that “all Arabs” participate while Israel does not. This results in Israeli Muslim and Christian professionals being welcomed only as Arabs, not as Israelis, effectively erasing their national identity in international fora.

The Path Forward

If institutions like the UfM want to be relevant in 2030 and beyond, and stay funded, they must protect technical cooperation from political vetoes. Guarantee representation for all regional innovators, including Israelis. Elevate women, climate, and youth programs as de-politicized peace platforms. Stop outsourcing Mediterranean cooperation to Gulf funders with political conditions. Publicly acknowledge sins of omission instead of hiding behind “neutrality”

Because the greatest danger in Euro-Mediterranean cooperation today is not conflict — it is the cowardice of institutions unwilling to use the tools that build peace.

 

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