European Union member states failed – yet again – to take action on Israel’s numerous war crimes as the bloc’s Foreign Affairs Council chose not to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement on Tuesday. After the meeting, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas said there was “no unanimity on the proposal tabled by some member states for a full or partial suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement.”
The lack of unanimity reportedly meant several of the bloc’s largest members, notably Germany and Italy, maintained their more or less explicit positions of support for Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration – despite mass demands to change path expressed by people on the streets of these very countries.
“What Europe lacked to suspend its partnership with Israel was not unanimity, but humanity,” Marc Botenga, Member of the European Parliament for the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PTB-PVDA), wrote in response. “Faced with an ethnic cleansing that is spreading from Palestine to Lebanon, this was a deliberate choice of complicity.”
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Last week, the governments of Spain, Slovenia, and Ireland addressed Kallas in a letter demanding the potential suspension to be added to the council’s agenda. The request was later backed by Belgium. The letter outlined Israel’s crimes in Gaza and other occupied territories, as well as Lebanon – crimes EU members and institutions have been aware of for over two years – quoting the occupation power’s infringement of the agreement’s human rights clauses. “The earlier review of Israel’s obligations under Article 2 of the Agreement was clear that Israel is in breach of its human rights obligations, and the situation has only deteriorated since then,” they warned.
“We call on the European Union to uphold its moral and political responsibility,” they added. “By principled coherence and for the sake of its own credibility, the European Union can no longer remain silent or inactive in the face of such breaches.”
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While demands to suspend the agreement have been tabled by movements and progressive forces since the beginning of the genocide, they have gained traction as Israel’s crimes became more and more difficult to ignore. “Real economic and political pressure on the Netanyahu regime is needed as Israel continues to kill Palestinians and Lebanese despite claims of a ceasefire,” said The Left in the European Parliament.
“We do not need more statements of concern,” added Sinn Féin MEP Lynn Boylan ahead of the ministerial meeting. “We do not need more weak-willed condemnation. Anything less than suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement will be an act of profound moral cowardice from which the EU may never recover.”
Similarly, UN experts warned the failure to suspend the agreement would represent a failure to act in line with international law. “For two and a half years now, the EU has witnessed escalating atrocities against Palestinians without taking any effective measure to uphold international law,” they wrote. “In light of the gravity and scale of the human rights violations documented, full suspension is not a matter of political discretion but a legal imperative incumbent on the EU, and represents the minimum measure required to align its actions with its obligations under international law.”
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