FOR blood-soaked decades the diplomatic game in the Arab-Israeli conflict has been summed up as “America plays, Europe pays”. American mediators from Henry Kissinger onwards have shuttled to and from Jerusalem, while the Europeans have become the biggest paymasters of the Palestinian Authority.

Now fate has put the Europeans at the centre of the showdown over the Palestinian demand for full membership of the United Nations. The Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, and the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, will square off with speeches to the General Assembly on the same day. Each carries a gun. Some in Israel threaten to annex settlements in the occupied West Bank and to cut off the Palestinians' customs revenues. The Palestinians can inflame the Arab street at a time of revolutionary turmoil, in which Israel stands perilously isolated after the breakdown in its diplomatic ties with Turkey and Egypt.

Step in the Europeans, who are desperate to stop the fight, for many reasons. They think a negotiated deal is the best way to lasting peace. They fear a bust-up will radicalise their already-turbulent southern and eastern neighbourhoods. And they do not want to expose their own divisions. So far the Europeans are united only in silence, saying they will not declare themselves until they see what, precisely, the Palestinians are asking for. Does anybody care? Surprisingly, perhaps, yes.

Although often mocked in Brussels as a mediocrity, Catherine Ashton, the European Union's foreign-policy chief, finds herself at the heart of Middle Eastern mediation. To some extent she has taken the role by default, as America has stepped back from peacemaking. Barack Obama has given up trying to force Mr Netanyahu to halt settlement-building in the West Bank. Tony Blair, the former British prime minister and envoy of the so-called Quartet (America, Russia, the UN and the EU) is discredited in the eyes of many Arabs, not just for his war in Iraq but also for supposedly favouring Israel. “He sounds like an Israeli diplomat sometimes,” says Nabil Shaath, a senior Palestinian negotiator.

Lady Ashton, by contrast, has managed to win a degree of trust among Palestinians—her office in Brussels is decorated with a kite painted by children in Gaza—without losing the confidence of the Israelis. Mr Netanyahu has seen her three times in recent weeks. “We take her very seriously,” declares an Israeli official. “Her heart is in the right place,” says a Palestinian one.

Both sides want Europe's support. It will not change the outcome in the UN: the Palestinians' quest for full membership is sure to be vetoed by America in the Security Council, but they can secure the votes in the General Assembly that they need to upgrade their status from a non-member “observer entity” to a non-member “observer state”—a rank comparable to that of the Vatican (and, in the past, of Switzerland and West Germany). But, as one Israeli official puts it, “the Europeans represent legitimacy.” European support for Palestinian membership could leave the Americans isolated in the Security Council. And without the backing of leading European democracies, an enhanced Palestinian status in the General Assembly would look empty.

As ever, the Europeans would exert more moral influence if they acted in unison. Yet on the question of Palestine, especially, they struggle to speak with one voice. In February European members in the Security Council voted together—against a lone American veto—to denounce illegal Israeli settlements. But in 2009 they split three ways in the General Assembly over endorsing the contentious Goldstone report, which cited evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Israel (and Hamas) in the Gaza Strip during the 2008-09 war.

Lady Ashton has tried to propose an alternative to full UN membership: the Vatican option, plus a Quartet statement setting out the terms and timetable for new talks on Palestinian statehood. This, she thinks, would give the Palestinians a tangible gain and maintain European unity. But the Palestinians have rejected her advice, in part because they doubt she can deliver all 27 EU votes in the General Assembly. On the face of it Palestinians have chosen principle over pragmatism. Why, they say, should they give up their right to UN membership to spare the EU's blushes?

Yet the Europeans still see room for manoeuvre. It could take months for the Palestinians' membership request to reach a Security Council vote. And now minds in the Quartet are concentrated on trying to restart talks. The Palestinians have cocked the gun; the Europeans are trying to put it in a bulletproof box. Success would be a diplomatic triumph for Lady Ashton, but it will be hard. Neither Mr Netanyahu nor Mr Abbas seems ready or able to begin negotiations, let alone agree to lasting peace.

Just say Yes

So the Europeans in the Security Council could be called on to take sides. France may yet support Palestinian membership of the UN; the Germans will surely champion Israel; the British will probably abstain. From Charlemagne's perspective, not just as a resident of Brussels but as a former Jerusalem correspondent, it would be better for all three to support the Palestinian bid.

This would keep alive the hope of a two-state solution. More than six decades after the UN voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, the idea is dying thanks to relentless Israeli settlement-building and the violent irredentism of Hamas and others. Yet as well as asserting Palestinians' right to statehood, the Europeans should say what they cannot have: an unfettered right of return for refugees to modern-day Israel. On these terms, France and Britain might be able to support the Palestinians, and the German government could abstain. Nobody expects Germany, with its Holocaust burden, to vote against Israel. But abstention would be a tacit Yes to a fair peace.

Economist.com/blogs/charlemagne