{"id":1523,"date":"2025-07-01T18:03:03","date_gmt":"2025-07-01T18:03:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2025\/07\/01\/by-sacrificing-palestine-europe-betrays-itself\/"},"modified":"2025-07-01T18:03:03","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T18:03:03","slug":"by-sacrificing-palestine-europe-betrays-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2025\/07\/01\/by-sacrificing-palestine-europe-betrays-itself\/","title":{"rendered":"By sacrificing Palestine, Europe betrays itself"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\u201cLaw is interpreted for friends and applied to enemies,\u201d Italian statesman Giovanni Giolitti once said.<\/p>\n

There are few better examples of this than the way the European Union bends over backwards to avoid addressing Israel\u2019s severe breaches of international law and the terms of its association agreement with the bloc.<\/p>\n

On May 20, the EU\u2019s Foreign Affairs Council (FAC) voted\u00a0to conduct a review of whether Israel was denying Palestinians\u2019 human rights by preventing humanitarian aid from entering Gaza.<\/p>\n

A month later, the same body concluded: \u201cThere are indications that Israel would be in breach of its human rights obligations under Article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement.\u201d Indications \u2026<\/p>\n

On June 26, EU heads of government at a European Council meeting\u00a0concluded that they \u201cnoted\u201d those indications and invited the FAC to \u201ccontinue discussions\u201d in July.<\/p>\n

It is understandable that some initially welcomed the vote to review the EU-Israel Association Agreement back in May. It is only human to hold on to anything that gives hope that action will finally be taken to protect the human rights of the Palestinian people.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the entire \u201cdebate\u201d over the EU-Israel\u00a0Association Agreement is simply a sham. It does not represent serious action on by the EU to address the atrocities Israel is committing in Gaza and elsewhere in the occupied Palestinian territory. It deflects growing criticism by giving the impression that the EU may finally be thinking of doing something. More importantly, it distracts from the obligations which the EU and its members are legally bound to fulfil.<\/p>\n

Human rights pretences<\/h2>\n

Twenty months into Israel\u2019s devastating war in Gaza, Israel\u2019s breaches of human rights and international law are so extensive that there can be no doubt about their relevance to the EU-Israel Association Agreement.<\/p>\n

They are so numerous that they must be organised into categories to capture the depth and breadth of destruction wrought onto\u00a0every aspect\u00a0of life in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Israel has been accused of intentionally creating conditions calculated to destroy the possibility for Palestinian life in the Strip, which amounts to genocide. This includes domicide\u00a0and the laying to waste of Gaza\u2019s urban landscape;\u00a0medicide \u2013 systematically dismantling the\u00a0healthcare system; scholasticide\u00a0\u2013 destroying schools, universities and libraries; ecocide\u00a0\u2013 wiping out Gaza\u2019s agriculture and nature; econocide \u2013 the devastation of Gaza\u2019s economy; and\u00a0unchilding\u00a0\u2013 making childhood impossible.<\/p>\n

More than 90 percent of Gaza\u2019s population, or 1.9 million people, have been displaced, and in the past three months alone, over 600,000 people have been displaced again, as many as\u00a010 times or more. A full blockade was imposed by the Israelis since March 2, and meagre aid deliveries were reinstated only in late May. Famine is widespread; 66 children have died of starvation, and more than 5,000 were hospitalised with acute malnutrition in May alone.<\/p>\n

Under pressure from European public opinion, which is increasingly rejecting European support for Israel, the EU finally decided to do something. But that something involved a fair bit of talking and \u2013 so far \u2013 no action.<\/p>\n

The bloc decided to vote on reviewing the EU-Israel Association Agreement. But this was nothing out of the ordinary because all association agreements should be subject to regular reviews, which can trigger either advances or scaling back\u00a0the depth and breadth of relations.<\/p>\n

In fact, those who called for the vote knew very well that suspension of the agreement requires\u00a0a\u00a0unanimous vote by 27 member states, which is currently impossible. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and member states, such as Germany, Italy and Hungary, have made crystal clear their unwavering support for Israel. In these circumstances, hoping for a unanimous vote to suspend the agreement is close to delusional. A qualified majority vote might suspend parts of the agreement on trade, but that is the most one can hope for.<\/p>\n

This is hardly a ringing endorsement of the Union\u2019s commitment to human rights and \u201cfundamental values\u201d. Instead, public invocations by governments and officials of Article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, which states that all areas covered by the agreement itself \u201cshall be based on respect for human rights\u201d, are no more than empty rhetoric.<\/p>\n

In reality, the EU never intended for these human rights conditionalities to be taken seriously. It is easy to see why; it never specified by what criteria human rights should be assessed, and it chose not to make these assessments routine, compulsory, and public.<\/p>\n

In this way, the EU leaves itself enough space to claim it values \u201chuman rights and fundamental values\u201d while, in fact, \u201cinterpreting away\u201d its own rules to avoid having to take any significant action.<\/p>\n

Empty rhetoric<\/h2>\n

Some European states have decided to take individual action, but what they have done has been just as meaningless as the EU agreement review.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0United Kingdom suspended trade talks\u00a0with Israel, but not trade. Its recent\u00a0communique alongside France and Canada was trumpeted as \u201ctougher\u201d than the EU\u2019s statements. Yet, the communique opposes only Israel\u2019s \u201cexpansion of military operations in Gaza\u201d: It takes issue only with the extension and intensification of Israel\u2019s assault, not with the devastation wrought upon the Strip so far.<\/p>\n

Nor does it mention the war crimes Israel has been accused of, or declare a commitment to uphold the International Criminal Court\u2019s (ICC) arrest warrants\u00a0for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.<\/p>\n

In fact, despite the UK summoning Israel\u2019s ambassador after its \u201ctough\u201d joint statement with France and Canada, it continued its\u00a0surveillance flights\u00a0over or close to Gaza\u2019s airspace, which are suspected of gathering intelligence for the Israeli army.<\/p>\n

France, for its part, declared it would recognise a Palestinian state in June. June came and went without recognition.<\/p>\n

In October 2023, Spain claimed that it stopped selling weapons to Israel. In May, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez declared, \u201cWe do not do business with a genocidal state.\u201d And yet, a Barcelona-based think tank revealed recently the existence of more than 40 contracts\u00a0between Spanish state institutions and Israeli defence companies.<\/p>\n

Germany, France, the UK and Italy also continue to supply weapons<\/a> in breach of the spirit of international law.<\/p>\n

Legal obligations<\/h2>\n

If European governments\u00a0were\u00a0serious about responding to Israel\u2019s crimes, they could do that by simply abiding by their legal obligations under the various EU treaties and international law.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0EU Charter of Fundamental Rights\u00a0and the\u00a0Lisbon Treaty require the bloc to embed respect for \u201cdemocracy, human rights and fundamental values\u201d into all EU policies. This is why all association agreements have human rights conditionalities in the first place.<\/p>\n

The Genocide Convention imposes a preventive duty to use \u201call means reasonably available\u201d to prevent genocide. Already in January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accepted that Palestinians\u2019 right to be protected from genocide may be being violated.<\/p>\n

The actions EU states can take include, but are not limited to: halting arms contracts with the Israeli government and Israeli companies; suspending intelligence cooperation; and cutting commercial, cultural and research exchanges with and funding for Israeli private and public institutions on occupied Palestinian land. They should also support the rigorous application of international law, including backing the case against Israel at the ICJ and enforcing arrest warrants issued by the ICC.<\/p>\n

Currently, the EU is in flagrant violation of its legal duties and its own rules. That is a direct consequence of decades of ignoring gross abuses by Israel and other associated states, including Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt.<\/p>\n

No amount of \u201cinterpreting\u201d law or hiding behind procedure can mask the fact that the EU is in flagrant violation of its legal obligations and the spirit of its own rules. It has a track record of ignoring continued human rights abuses in associated states, including Israel, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, and Jordan. This track record has reached an ignominious peak since October 2023.<\/p>\n

Inaction on Gaza reveals the limits of Europe\u2019s commitment to its self-proclaimed values: by\u00a0sacrificing Palestine, Europe betrays itself.<\/p>\n

The views expressed in this article are the author\u2019s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera\u2019s editorial stance.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cLaw is interpreted for friends and applied to enemies,\u201d Italian statesman Giovanni Giolitti once said. There are few better examples of this than the way the European Union bends over backwards to avoid addressing Israel\u2019s severe breaches of international law and the terms of its association agreement with the bloc. On May 20, the EU\u2019s … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1524,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}