After ten months of war in the tiny Palestinian territory of Gaza, the urgent need for an effective initiative should be obvious to the whole world and especially to the European Union (EU). The bombings follow one another without a let-up, day after day, night after night, leaving no hope for a pause or a cease-fire. Will the Union and its members make do, once again, with denouncing this unending nightmare and calling for a cease-fire – as they did belatedly in March 2024 – and for the liberation of the Israeli hostages, without taking any concrete action? Will they, like the United States, go on hedging, or supporting de facto the Israeli government’s policies? Or will they finally intervene to enforce the respect for human life, human rights, international law and give peace and justice a chance?
A state of emergency has existed for months now, while the morbid statistics tick by like an endless reign of horror movie. At the beginning of August, the UN agencies deplored the death, in a Gaza Strip reduced to ashes, of 40,000 Palestinians, with 10,000 more buried under the rubble. They number 90,000 wounded. Thousands of children have undergone amputations without aesthetics, thousands of others are orphaned. All are poly traumatised.
What we see on our screens is their daily experience. That of hundreds of thousands of displaced and re-displaced persons from one non-existent shelter to another, children collecting a little polluted water in a mud puddle, queuing in the hope of filling billy can, trailing tearfully after their mother’s coffin or their huge eyes staring ut of emaciated, starving faces waiting for death.
All the international agencies and NGOs have been raising the alarm for months: 82% of the territory’s infrastructure has been destroyed or shamed, 88% of its schools and 67% of its water facilities. The sanitary crisis is combined with a humanitarian crisis.
In the occupied West Bank, as of 16 August 2024, 633 Palestinians had been killed and over 5,200 wounded since October 7 commando attack which had taken the lives of 1,139 Israeli citizens and foreign visitors, of whom 764 were civilians, while 248 were taken hostage. Thus over 600 people were murdered by the colonists and the army of occupation, more than the whole previous year, which had been the bloodiest since the second Intifada, soldiers and colonists having killed 492 Palestinians, including in East Jerusalem, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), quoted by human Rights Watch.1
Whole communities are forcibly displaced. The World Health Organisation (WHO) is also worried about the sanitary crisis in the West Bank where the restrictions and the violence perpetrated by the colonists and the army as well as the attacks against the medical infrastructure restrict the availability of health car, as do the closing down of checkpoints and the closure of whole villages. Nearly half of the most essential medicaments are out of stock. Besides which Israel retains an increasing share of the income tax which it collects from Palestinian workers and owes to the Palestinian Authority.
Inverting the program
In this context, Spain, Ireland and Norway have decided to act together. Joined by Slovenia and Armenia, they recognised the State of Palestine at the end of May. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez warned the world that Spain would not recognise any change of the 1967 borders without a previous agreement between Israel and the State of Palestine. ‘The Palestinian State must be viable, with the West Bank and Gaza linked by a corridor and East Jerusalem as its capital,’ he declared, quoting UN Security Council Resolutions 242 (1968) and 338 (1973). Peace can only be achieved through the two-state solution, Israel and Palestine, ‘living side by side (…) in peace and security’.2
Before that announcement, 143 of the 193 Member States of the UN had already recognised a Palestinian State, including 10 of the 27 members of the European Union. Among these latter, some that belonged to the socialist camp during the cold war now are outright supporters of Israel, its government and its policies.
But what does recognising the State of Palestine mean now that the Israeli army has cut the Gaza Strip off from the West Bank (in violation of the law and of the agreement known as ‘Gaza-Jericho first’ or ‘Oslo 1’ of 4 May 1994) and transformed the latter into a set of micro-enclaves deprived of territorial contiguity? Does this recognition have any value at all without preliminary consultation of the Palestinian people, separated geographically by occupation and exile, especially the refugees? For the five countries that have just announced their recognition, the goal is to invert the program as it was, no longer to wait for the conclusion of some future Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in an unequal tete-a-tete to recognise those Palestinian national rights which Tel-Aviv rejects out of hand in any case. The question is not a new one. In Venice, in 1980, the nine States forming at the time the European Economic Community (EEC, forerunner of the EU) stipulated, ‘the right to a secure existence of all the countries in the region, including Israel, and justice for the peoples which implies the recognition of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people’. In 1988, after Palestine’s declaration of independence proclaimed by Yasser Arafat in Algiers on 15 November, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia (divided in 1992 into the Czech Republic and Slovakia) who were not then members of the EU, recognised that state, as did Cyprus and Malta. On 26 March 1999, at the European Council in Berlin, the European Union reaffirmed, ‘the Palestinians’ permanent and unrestricted right of self-determination, including the option of a State.’ The Union expressed
its conviction that the creation of a democratic, viable and peaceful Palestinian State, on the basis of existing agreements and through negotiations would the best guarantee for the security of Israel and of its acceptance as a partner in the region.
And it announced that it was prepared to recognise Palestine ‘in due time’. According to the agreement known as Oslo 1, that should have happened by the latest on 4 May 1999. But on that very day a snap parliamentary election had been called in Israel. Imitating the United States, the EU brought pressure to bear on the Palestinians prior to this election: no recognition of their state. Since then, that ‘in due time’ has never arrived and only Sweden joined the pioneers of recognition in 2014, before again supporting Tel-Aviv’s policies.
How to get past this stalemate? Speaking to the French National Assembly on the issue of the recognition of the State of Palestine on 28 November 2014, the day before the start of the parliamentary debate, Laurent Fabius, then French Foreign Minister, had this to say: ‘The question before us is not therefore one of principle, since this has already been settled, it is one of the ways and means: when and how? More broadly, what method should be used to try concretely to achieve peace?’ And he specified:
We consider that it is indispensable to avoid a solitary face to face between Israelis and Palestinians, a method which has demonstrated its inefficacy (…) we must therefore try to improve that method. There must be an accompaniment, some will call it pressure exerted by the international community to help both parties accomplish the indispensable final gesture and the last step which will lead to peace. [He wishes] to set a course [and] a calendar. [What if a] final attempt at a negotiated solution fails? Then France must assume its responsibilities by immediately recognising the State of Palestine. We are ready to do that.
But Jean-Marc Ayrault, Fabius’ successor as Foreign Minister turned his back on that analysis and that promise and took up the old refrain: ‘the recognition of the State of Palestine must come about only as a result of negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Authority’.
According to the EU, the two-state solution is the only one possible. The members reconfirmed this in January 2012, while Josip Birrell, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security, wondered out loud: ‘What are the other solutions which [Israel] has in mind? Driving all the Palestinians away? Killing them off?
After ten months of war waged against the Gazan population, inverting the program and recognising the state of Palestine therefore means, in the minds of those who advocate it, laying new foundations for future negotiations based on the principles of international law, applied according to rules which will need to be discussed – all of this under the auspices of the United Nations. This would also make it possible to reinforce the rights of the Palestinians, already obtained in many UN agencies, thanks to its status as non-member observer State, officially recorded on 29 November 2012, one year after Palestine had been recognised as a member of UNESCO. None of this prejudges the choices which the Palestinian people may make – including the hypothesis of a binational state – who must be free to exercise their voting rights.
Sharp reactions in Tel-Aviv
It seems likely that the decision taken by these five European nations has more than a symbolic value. As proof we need only observe the reactions in the United States, the country which systematically makes use of its veto in the Security Council, as it did last 18 April. As for Benyamin Netanyahu’s government, it took retaliatory measures, such as “cutting the connection” between the Spanish consulate in Jerusalem and the Palestinians. Repressive reactions of the sort are repeated every time some tiny step is taken in favour of Palestinians rights, such as the verdicts of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) or the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The latest opinion produced by the ICJ on the “legal consequences arising from the policies and practices of Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem” since 1967 is no exception. Solicited by the UN General Assembly in December 2022 (therefore prior to 7 October), its response was made public on 19 July 2024. And it was perfectly clear: Israel’s occupation is “illegal” in its very principle, it has led to the annexation of large parts of Palestinian territory and violates the Palestinian people’s right of self-determination.3 The judges remind us that many of Israel’s practices and policies are in violation of international law, in particular the colonisation, confiscation of land and natural resources, forced population displacement, limitations on the free circulation of Palestinians… They accuse Tel-Aviv of having set up a discriminatory system against Palestinians, instituting de facto “racial segregation” and “apartheid”.
For the ICJ, Israel must end its occupation of Palestinian territory’ without delay’ dismantle the colonies and compensate the population. A history-making opinion but one which is non-binding. Will it at last bring the member countries of the EU or some of them at least to react, to recognise the State of Palestine and sanction Tel-Aviv? Or will it be simply disregarded, like the 2004 opinion, censuring Israel’s wall of annexation in the West Bank and calling on States to enforce the law.? The reactions to this new ruling don’t leave much room for doubt. The EU considers that:
these conclusions are largely compatible with the EU’s positions which are themselves completely in line with the UN resolutions concerning the statute of occupied Palestinian territory (…)/All States have an obligation not to recognise the legality of this situation and not to render aid or assistance to maintaining the situation created by this illegal presence.
In the words of Josip Borrell:
In a world characterised by constant and increasing violations of international law, it is our moral duty to reassert our unfailing and coherent commitment to all the rulings of the ICJ, on whatever subject.
As for France, it ‘makes note’ of the Court’s opinion. It ‘confirms its attachment to the International Court of Justice and calls upon Israel to respect all of its obligations under international law.’ Nothing more. The day before this opinion was published, the Israeli parliament passed a resolution stating that Israel was firmly opposed ‘to the creation of a Palestinian State west of the Jordan.’ A decision which was in violation of international law, and of the Oslo agreement, which unbridled colonisation rendered inoperative years ago and which the successors of Premier Yitzhak Rabin, murdered in November 1995, have never ceased to extend.
Addressing the United Nations on 22 September 2023 Benymin Netanyahu had the gall to display a map of Israel from the sea to the river Jordan, on which no border with Palestinian territory was shown since he intends to annex it.
After the vote was taken, Washington timidly expressed its embarrassment, reconfirming its theoretical support for a political solution based on the coexistence of two States, but maintaining its financial and military support for Tel-Aviv. In the name of the European Union, Josip Borell did no more than ‘deplore’ the Israeli resolution, the EU reconfirming officially its commitment to a two-state solution. A commitment which remains purely verbal. France expressed its ‘consternation.’
The urgent need for sanctions
And yet the most important thing is to address the urgency, oblige Israel to accept a cease-fire in Gaza and implement the rulings of the ICJ handed down in January and May of 2024 after examining South Africa’s complaint, to enforce international humanitarian law and save the Palestinian population from ‘a risk of genocide’.
After another Israeli bombing on 10 August, massacring some hundred Palestinians and wounding dozens of others in a school overcrowded with refugees, there were calls for a cease-fire from all sides. But beyond these verbal gestures, not one ruler suggested a concrete initiative. As if to excuse its political inertia, the European Union never stops vaunting its humanitarian initiatives … not without a bit of hedging.
In January 2024, immediately after the ICJ’s first ruling, Tel-Aviv riposted by accusing 12 employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East (UNRWA) of having supported the Hamas attacks in Israel or having taken part in them, without providing the least proof. Several members of the EU immediately imitated Washington’s decision to suspend their financial contributions to UNRWA (financed on a voluntary basis), yet the agency’s work is indispensable for the survival of the population of Gaza and more generally that of the Palestinian refugee camps. In the end, the USA and the EU, who had waited for the conclusions of an inquiry, resumed their aid in March and then in May 2024. But Europe refuses to consider any sanction against the political and military rulers of Israel to achieve a cease-fire, still less for putting an end to the colonisation and occupation.
Yet in the past decades, similar sanctions have shown their efficacy. At the time of the first Intifada (1987–1993), Claude Cheysson, a European commissioner at the time, considering that the punitive shutdown by Israel of the Palestinian universities was contrary to international law, had threatened Tel-Aviv, in 1988, with the suspension of the agreements in the areas of education, culture and science, if the Palestinian universities were not reopened. He was successful. In 1992, Secretary of State James Baker conditioned the granting to Israel of guarantees for bank loans of ten million dollars on an end to colonisation in the West Bank and Gaza. In the election that took place that same year, Yitzhak Shamir who would not hear of it, lost the majority to the Labour Party, led by Yitzhak Rabin. The European Union and its Member States have at their disposal many possible levers. This is particularly the case with the association agreement, signed immediately after Oslo and adopted in 2000, which provides, among other things, for the liberalisation of trade exchanges. In the summer of 1996, Benyamin Netanyahu, already Prime Minister at the time, had authorised the digging of a tunnel under the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. During the street protests, several dozen Palestinians were killed. In France, the association’s belonging to the brand-new platform of NGOs for Palestine had conclude that protests were not enough and carried out an intense campaign lasting two years and managed to prevent the ratification of the agreement by Parliament. It was the same in Belgium, all the other European States having already ratified it. Following the 1999 elections when Ehoud Barak replaced Benyamin Netanyahu, the agreement was approved. But its article 2 refers explicitly to the contracting parties’ obligation to respect human rights. Whence the demand to suspend the agreement voiced today by human rights associations, many MPS and various public figures all over Europe.
The Irish and Spanish governments are demanding the revision of the agreement, since the European Union is Israel’s main trade partner. On 27 May, the Foreign Ministers decided to call a meeting of the EU-Israel Association Council ‘to discuss the situation in Gaza and the respect for human rights in the context of the obligations assumed by Israel’, in the words of Josip Borrell. At the time, they were reacting to the bombings of Rafah and the rest of the Gaza Strip in violation of the rulings of the ICJ. Belgium expressed the belief that the credibility of Europe was at stake. However, the meeting was not to take place. Several States refused to exercise any pressure at all, Hungary and the Czech Republic while the German government imagined that the historic responsibility of its country in the genocide of the Jews of Europe had to lead it to back Israel and its policies in spite of the crimes of its rulers.
Aligned with Washington
In the name of an unobtainable diplomatic consensus, has the European Union decided to fall in line with Washington without any other form of intervention? Such is the case with some of its members, especially those who already had no problem taking part in the war against Iraq in 2003. The fact is that the EU has given up any political role for over 30 years. From the beginning of the Oslo talks. It has confined itself to an economic role and left to the US and to the Russians, then to the US alone, the task of overseeing politically a process which quickly became a ‘peace process’ in name only. Even within this framework, the European Neighbourhood Policy with Israel led to its being considered a ‘high tech country’. A ‘start-up nation’, praised in France as a democratic partner, as enthusiastically by Nicolas Sarkozy as by his successors. In fact, Emmanuel Macron had no qualms about inviting his opposite number, Israeli President Yitzhak Herzog to the Elysée for the opening ceremony of the Olympic games on last 25 July.
While Israel was bombing Gaza in the Winter of 2008–2009, Bernard Kouchner, French Foreign Minister at the time, had already tried to ‘enhance’ (‘rehausser’ was the official term) economic and diplomatic relations between the EU and Israel. He had to give it up… Not for very long, because since then there has been one agreement after another. On 6 December 2021, TelèAviv officially became a member of the program of research and innovation called Horizon Europe, endowed with more than ninety-five billion euros over the period 2021–2027.
And yet the UE can make us of sanctions when it believes the circumstances demand them. As against Russia. It can freeze state funds or block the holdings of private persons, groups or organisations, companies, governments, can decree territorial exclusions, arms embargo, reduce or terminate economic exchanges. In April, the Council of the European Union announced sanctions against four ‘extremist’ colonists and two entities for serious violations of human rights against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East-Jerusalem.
But as for arms sales, they are the object of no restriction whatsoever. At the end of May, after one of the most murderous Israeli bombings of Palestiniasan refugees jn Rafah, the French government cancelled the scheduled participation of Israeli armaments industrialists in the Eurosatory defence exhibition held from 17 to 21 June 2024. NGOs had filed motions for summary judgement because they considered the measures taken had been inadequate, the Bobigny court had ordered the organisers of the show (Coges Events) to
ban the participation under whatever guise, of Israeli armaments industrialists and any employee or representative of Israeli armament companies as well as any natural or legal person likely to operate as their messenger or intermediary. [It also forbade] other companies or exhibitors to welcome on their stands representatives of Israeli armament companies, to sell or advertise Israeli weapons.
The organisers of Eurosatory brought the matter before the Paris Appellate Court, which authorised, on the evening of 18 June the presence of representatives or intermediaries of Israeli firms: a ruling issued a short time after the Paris Commercial Court had ruled their exclusion from the show ‘illicit’. So, despite the deaths and the horrors, it was business as usual. Which didn’t prevent Arie King, Israeli deputy mayor of Jerusalem, from telling the city workers to stop collecting the French consulate’s trash.
Whereas until the nineties Europe prided itself on upholding international law, it seems to have given up on that. And Tel-Aviv knows it has allies here, first among the far-right parties and governments, be they anti-Semitic, provided they defend its policies, its war and its colonisation in the name of a common crusade against Islamism of which Benyamin Netanyahu proclaims himself the champion. This European attitude constitutes a moral defeat. A diplomatic one as well, insofar as the global South rightly accuses Europe of practising a double standard and undermining the principles of universal law which emerged from the end of WW2 and the victory over Nazism.
Despite the identitarian temptations, hatred of the Other and sad passions revealed by the last elections, European societies and especially their young people also are the bearers of other demands. Of active solidarity in favour of peace and justice. And the protection of the Palestinian people. And in support of European initiatives by which their actions would match their official rhetoric in favour of peace and respect for the most elementary human rights.
1West Bank: Israeli Forces’ Unlawful Killings of Palestinians’ Human Rights Watch, 8 May 2024.
2Government of Spain approves recognition of the State of Palestine’ La Moncioa, 28 May 2024.
3“International justice: the ICJ demands “the end of Israel’s presence” in the Occupied Palestinian...” UN Regional Information Centre for Western Europe, 19 July 2024.