In the nick of time, after the door had already been shut but just before it would have been locked, the European Union agreed to let Israel be part of the Horizon 2020 Initiative, which is the lifeblood of the Israeli scientific community. At the 11th hour, academia's heavyweights -- Professor Ruth Arnon, Professor Manuel Trajtenberg and Professor Dan Shechtman -- scrambled to sound the alarm, warning the government that taking no action would deal some 2,000 Israeli scientists a devastating blow for generations to come. The way things unfolded in this saga -- which could have resulted in some 1.3 billion euros being withheld from Israeli labs -- merits a meticulous analysis. The European officials, those at the European Commission, kept ignoring the detailed explanations Deputy Foreign Minister Zeev Elkin provided them on Nov. 5. Their response came too late, denying Israel the necessary time it would need to adjust. Science and Technology Minister Yaakov Peri, alarmed by the potential peril, called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and only then did Europe and Israel start talking; this culminated with the conversation Justice Minister Tzipi Livni had with EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton. This also requires a thorough examination for future reference: Christian Berger, the director for North Africa, Middle East, Arabian Peninsula, Iran and Iraq at the EU is the hostile individual in the European Commission who deals with the Horizon 2020 Initiative. Officials in Jerusalem say he is one of Israel's ill-wishers. The fact that Israel had to contact Ashton directly to save a scientific agreement says a lot. The fact that Ashton, who could hardly be described as pro-Israeli, is Israel's last hope, goes to show just how precarious Israel's situation is in Brussels. It is just too bad, and quite worrisome, that Europe prefers to boycott a large segment of the Israeli populace rather than negotiate with the government. Israel had no choice but to acknowledge the EU's right to attach strings to its funds so that they do not get spent on projects beyond Green Line, but Berger and his cohorts wanted to go even further: they wanted to have every Israeli scientist sign a statement indicating he was aware of EU guidelines stipulating Israel's presence in Judea and Samaria was illegal. Finally, a compromise was struck. The new European guidelines were ultimately incorporated into the agreement, but Israel was allowed a provision in which it made clear that they were unacceptable. This new language helped end the stalemate. But the European intransigence until the very last moment must serve as a warning signal that our relations with Europe could be imperiled down the road, at least in the foreseeable future. While Livni managed to hammer out a compromise, her adversaries in the European Union also managed to make unprecedented gains. International organizations will try to restore the old language of the deal, and in some cases they will take it to an extreme. The silence on the right attests to just how things have deteriorated. The Likud accepted the EU's delegitimization of the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. Likewise, Yisrael Beytenu and Habayit Hayehudi kept a low profile. They were worried that if they were at loggerheads with the EU and its Bergers and Ashtons, a large segment of the population would rise up against them. They feared that the Israeli scientific well would be depleted as a result of this. The weak response of ministers Uri Ariel and Avigdor Lieberman, deputy ministers Zeev Elkin, Danny Danon, Tzipi Hotovely and Ofir Akunis, as well as MKs Orit Struck and Yariv Levin, says it all; as for Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett, he has essentially become Livni's underling on this matter. The fact that they remained silent shows they too have finally understood what the average Israeli has long realized: that the government has no choice but to accept the two-state solution, or at least convince the world that it has embraced it. It might as well do that, because U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is already on his way.
