Attachments
A rising chorus of European states have condemned Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip after months of siege and bombardment. While much depends on Washington, European leaders have levers at their disposal to press for the war’s end.
Europe is finally finding its voice on the Gaza Strip. Some 600 days into Israel’s military campaign, launched after the 7 October 2023 attack by Hamas, at least 54,000 Palestinians and 1,600 Israelis are dead, and the Palestinian enclave is in ruins. Since March, when its latest offensive began, Israel has pushed Gaza’s 2.2 million people to the brink of starvation and now started compacting them at gunpoint into barely a fifth of the strip’s already crowded area. Still, until recently, only a handful of European governments had registered more than vague concern, while most had refrained from criticising Israel’s excessive use of force.
That is starting to change. In recent weeks, what was a trickle of declarations and warnings has swollen into a diplomatic torrent. Mainly, these statements are a response to Israeli leaders’ own comments that make clear they are weaponising aid delivery in Gaza. Harrowing images of Palestinians, particularly children, physically suffering from hunger after nearly three months of total blockade, as well as families killed by Israeli bombs, have made Israel’s collective punishment of Gaza harder for Europe to ignore. That polls show a consistent majority of Israelis backing an end to the war, in order to free the 58 hostages still in Gaza, and that many believe this newest assault to be motivated in large part by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s determination to stay in power and avoid corruption charges, drives home the futility of Israel’s return to war.
But while Europe’s words help evince frustration, they must be paired with action. As things stand, it remains unclear whether Israel and Hamas will agree to a ceasefire; much depends on how much pressure Washington is willing to impose. Even if a truce is reached, the enclave is already wrecked, its population decimated. Hamas, meanwhile, is weakened but still in place. Nothing guarantees that Israel would not renew its offensive after a pause and continue to inflict mass casualties on a starving population. For European Union members and the UK to have any hope of contributing to changes in Israel’s policy, they need to throw more of their economic and diplomatic weight into signalling to Israel that the Gaza campaign must end. A starting point would be to ban arms sales to Israel or, at least, forbid the use of weapons from Europe in Gaza; commit to upholding the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for top Israeli officials, including Netanyahu himself, if they travel to Europe; curb preferential trade benefits; and sanction those senior officials and ministers pushing illegal settlement policy, while threatening further steps if the assault does not stop.
European Policy Matters
Though Europe does not have the influence in Israel that the U.S. does, its policies still matter to Israelis, and there is much that European leaders can do. A complex web of preferential treaties links Israel and the EU, and the bloc accounts for a third of Israel’s global trade in goods (whereas commerce with Israel makes up less than 1 per cent of the EU’s). The UK and Germany still supply weapons to Israel, despite condemning the Gaza operation. A number of European countries are customers for Israeli arms exports. The continent, moreover, is in many ways Israel’s gateway to the world. It has welcomed Israeli participation in its own structures for sports, culture and research. That growing numbers of Israeli mainstream commentators and high-profile figures have spoken out about Gaza in the wake of stronger European statements illustrates the attention Israelis pay to what consequences the war might have for their relationship with the continent.
More European capitals have now taken a tougher stand against Israel’s Gaza campaign. Over recent weeks, France, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK, along with Canada, have joined countries like Spain, Ireland and Norway, which have been critical for longer, in calling for the war’s end. Even Germany, which has staunchly supported Israel’s conduct in Gaza since 7 October 2023, is now signalling alarm. The chancellor of Austria, another steadfast supporter, sent an unusually firm message in a late May phone conversation with Netanyahu, as did Italy’s premier, Giorgia Meloni.
The EU itself has also started to pull some levers, if gingerly. On 20 May, a solid majority of EU foreign ministers voted to review Israel’s compliance with the human rights clause of the 1995 Association Agreement that governs the EU’s trading and other ties with Israel. If the EU finds that Israel has failed to adhere to its commitment to respect human rights and democratic principles, the bloc can respond by taking measures that could amount to suspension of parts of the agreement, such as those covering free trade, scientific exchange and movement of capital. The EU high representative aims to present member state foreign ministers with options during their next meeting on 23 June. Given opposition from countries including Hungary and the Czech Republic, the agreement’s full suspension, which requires a unanimous vote, is unlikely. But a qualified majority (fifteen of 27 member states, representing at least 65 per cent of the EU’s population) could allow for suspension of Israel’s preferential trading privileges.
Individual European countries inside and outside the bloc have already hardened their stances in other ways. In May, the UK placed a pause on its negotiations with Israel over a post-Brexit free trade agreement, while sanctioning hardline Israeli settlers. France has joined Saudi Arabia in sponsoring a high-level conference at the UN in New York in mid-June, which aims to reinforce international commitment to a two-state solution to the conflict – a direct challenge to the Netanyahu government’s stated rejection of Palestinian statehood. The meeting, which is stirring growing support worldwide, could result in France, the UK and other countries recognising a Palestinian state. (Malta has declared that it will become the fourteenth of 27 EU member states to do so.) Recognition in itself will do little to bring about an end to the conflict, absent concrete steps to stop the Gaza war and curb Israeli settlement expansion, but it is symbolically important.
European states should go farther. Several European leaders, including Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán (who hosted Netanyahu in April), Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz (then on the campaign trail), have previously said they will not respect arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant. Some other governments have remained ambiguous about this question. Even leaving aside the overt double standards in European capitals claiming to uphold international law but declining to enforce ICC decisions they dislike, such action fuels the Israeli government’s sense of impunity. Instead, European capitals should commit publicly to upholding all ICC warrants.
Thus far, though some European civil society groups have taken legal initiativesto prosecute Israeli soldiers on war crimes charges, neither the EU nor any European government has formally suggested sanctioning Israeli officials or military personnel who can be plausibly linked to violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza and the West Bank, or politicians whose rhetoric has been characterised by human rights organisations and in filings before the International Court of Justice as incitement to genocide. The EU should test the feasibility of imposing sanctions against such individuals under its EU Human Rights Sanctions regime. Doing so would require a unanimous vote among member states. But mustering consensus for designations that focus squarely on individual accountability rather than state-level policy might be possible. Ideally, the EU would sanction even members of Israel’s coalition government where applicable. That measure is likely to be more contentious, though Sweden’s foreign minister, Maria Malmer Stenergard, has said her country would work within the EU to seek sanctions against ministers “pushing an illegal settlement policy and actively opposing a future two-state solution”.
Arms deliveries to Israel, including those licensed by Germany and the UK, should cease for now. EU member states, chiefly among them Germany, Israel’s second biggest arms supplier, should apply more assiduously the legally binding provisions of the EU Common Position on Arms Exports, which sets out eight criteria that must be considered before granting an export licence for conventional military technology and equipment. These criteria are supposed to ensure that arms exports do not contribute to state-led repression, international aggression or human rights abuses. Member states could also move to comply more strictly with regulations on the export of dual-use items. Spain has already proposed an arms embargo. Even in Germany, calls for ending the country’s weapon exports to Israel are getting louder, especially among lawmakers from the Social Democratic Party, Chancellor Merz’s junior coalition partner. In the UK, the government has suspended key licences for shipping arms to the country, but export of thousands of military items reportedly continues.
Before It is Too Late
Israel’s government has responded aggressively to this wave of European outrage. In the face of criticism, Netanyahu has accused London and Paris of helping Hamas. His ministers threaten that if more European countries grant diplomatic recognition to Palestine, Israel will formally annex chunks of the occupied West Bank. Others have bluntly said Israel does not care what Europe thinks. “If they tell us we can’t travel to Europe, we won’t go to Europe”, a former close Netanyahu adviser told Crisis Group. The bravado is partly a bluff and partly a smokescreen. De facto, Israel has already annexed most of the West Bank. On 29 May, Netanyahu’s government announced approval of 22 new settlements, the biggest single expansion in the occupied territory in three decades. Formal, de jure annexation would be an especially brazen violation of international legal prohibitions that could only lead to Israel’s further diplomatic isolation.
Since Israel broke the ceasefire in March, its relentless offensive has killed 4,000 Palestinians and displaced 600,000. The plan as it unfolds appears to be aimed at forcing further population movements through aerial bombing and ground incursions, while keeping food distribution limited to a few, Israeli-controlled sites. Israeli forces would then “cleanse” emptied areas of any remaining militants by systematically demolishing all buildings, a tactic that has already turned swathes of Gaza into a wasteland. If brought to fruition, this plan would leave Gaza’s entire population penned in camps and dependent on a drip-feed of food. Conditions might then be set for advancing what Israeli officials describe as “voluntary emigration”, but what in effect would be forcing Gazans to choose between suffering in their homeland or searching for respite in exile.
Europe’s inaction will go down not only as among its gravest moral failings in recent memory, but as an immense disservice to Israelis themselves.
Europe’s near silence – with notable exceptions – for so long in the face of such an assault partly owes to the tragedy that Israel suffered on 7 October 2023 and an understandable sense that Europe needed to stand by the country in a moment of trauma and need. Many European officials also subscribed to the view that Hamas, which the EU designates as a terrorist organisation, could not be allowed to walk away from that day’s crimes unpunished or continue to threaten Israel’s security. But as the horror in Gaza has mounted, and an increasing number of former Israeli military and civilian leaders have condemned the campaign, Europe’s inaction will go down not only as among its gravest moral failings in recent memory, but as an immense disservice to Israelis themselves. If Israel is still reeling from Hamas’s atrocities nearly twenty months ago and the hostages’ continued torment, coming to terms with the appalling suffering the subsequent assault has inflicted on Gaza will scar Israeli society for decades. A better and braver friend would have spoken out earlier and louder.
What matters now is that Europe acts. Even if Israel’s offensive ends today, the future of Gaza – much of it under rubble, its society torn apart, its children malnourished and traumatised – remains unclear. But it is hard to imagine the strip ever recovering if the next phase of operations proceeds as planned. Europe alone cannot rein in Netanyahu; only stronger pressure from Washington can push him into the ceasefire deal that, for all Hamas’s own intransigence, has long been on the table and would free the hostages, forge a path to Israel’s security and stop the devastation and mass displacement in Gaza. Europe’s leaders can, however, make clear to Israelis that their government has crossed a line and that what is being done in Gaza is indefensible. They should impose immediate measures – at least an end to weapons deliveries, sanctions and trade restrictions – to be lifted only when Israel halts its military campaign and returns to negotiations to get the hostages out and chart Gaza’s future. They should threaten other steps if the siege and bombardment continue. At a time when much of the Middle East wants to turn a page on the region’s wars, Netanyahu is driving Israel to ruin. Words alone will not stop him.