Why fury over Israeli actions in Gaza and West Bank may lead to EU sanctions

Arab News

25-05-2025

LONDON: Watching the widely circulated footage of Israeli soldiers firing 'warning shots' in the direction of a delegation of foreign diplomats visiting a refugee camp in the Palestinian city of Jenin on Wednesday, it was hard to resist the conclusion that the Israeli military had lost its collective mind.
Luckily, no one was injured in the incident. But in a manner of speaking, Israel shot itself in the foot.
The extraordinary provocation took place as Israel was already facing a rising wave of condemnation — internally and externally — and the threat of international sanctions for its actions in Gaza and the West Bank.
International support for Israel, so unified in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Palestinian militant groups, in which 1,200 Israelis and others were killed and 251 more were taken hostage, has steadily crumbled in the face of outrage after outrage, which collectively have left more than 50,000 Palestinians dead and much of Gaza reduced to uninhabitable rubble.
Last Tuesday, the day before the shooting incident in Jenin, the European Union announced that it was reviewing its political and economic relations with Israel – no hollow threat from a bloc that is Israel's biggest trading partner.
'The situation in Gaza is catastrophic,' Kaja Kallas, high representative of the EU for foreign affairs and security policy and vice-president of the European Commission, said on Tuesday.
Earlier that same day, the UN had raised the specter of thousands of babies dying of starvation 'in the next 48 hours' if Israel did not allow aid trucks to enter the territory immediately.
Israel, while rejecting the suggestion that mass starvation was imminent, responded by allowing what critics condemned as a wholly insufficient token amount of aid into Gaza.
'The aid that Israel has allowed in is of course welcomed, but it's a drop in the ocean,' said Kallas. 'Aid must flow immediately without obstruction and at scale.'
She had, she added, "made these points also with my talks with Israelis … and regional leaders as well. Pressure is necessary to change the situation.'
• 38% Germans who now view Israel negatively.
• 10% Drop in number of Germans who view Israel positively.
Source: Bertelsmann Foundation study
And pressure is building up. In an unprecedented move, the EU is now reviewing the EU-Israel Association Agreement, the legal basis for its trade relations with Israel, which entered into force in June 2000.
Pressure for this review has been mounting since May 7, when Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp urged the EU to act, saying 'the situation in Gaza compels us to take this step.'
Disturbed by the nightmarish scenes in Gaza and reports of increasing settler violence in the West Bank, his government, he said, 'will draw a line in the sand.'
Losing European trade would be a massive blow to Israel's economy. The EU is Israel's biggest trading partner – in 2024 34.2 percent of Israel's imports came from the EU while 28.8 percent of Israel's exports went to the EU. The total value of the trade in goods between the two in 2024 was €42.6 billion.
'The review will specifically assess Israel's adherence to the human rights provisions within the deal,' said Caroline Rose, a director at the New Lines Institute focused on defense, security and geopolitical landscapes.
The clause in the agreement that is now under legal scrutiny is Article 2. This states that 'Relations between the Parties, as well as all the provisions of the Agreement itself, shall be based on respect for human rights and democratic principles, which guides their internal and international policy and constitutes an essential element of this Agreement.'
Other international measures are under consideration, said Rose, including 'imposing a full arms embargo, referring Israel to the International Criminal Court (ICC), as advocated by Pakistan, enforcing a ceasefire and humanitarian aid access, sanctioning Israeli officials, supporting recognition of a Palestinian state, dismantling illegal settlements, reforming the UN Security Council veto system, and coordinating global reconstruction aid.'
Rose cautions that 'internal divisions within the bloc could stall progress. While 17 member states support the review, countries such as Germany, Hungary, Austria and Italy reportedly oppose it. Germany and Austria, in particular, have resisted punitive measures despite issuing public condemnations.'
Germany, bearing the moral weight of the Holocaust, has been a staunch supporter of Israel since its creation in 1948. But now, under new conservative chancellor Friedrich Merz, even Berlin is wavering.
Last week, out of concern for the situation in Gaza and the West Bank, Merz despatched his foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, on a fact-finding mission. Wadephul was among the diplomats scattered by the warning shots fired by the Israeli military on Wednesday, as were senior delegates from countries including France, Belgium, the UK, Italy, Canada, Russia and China.
All the countries involved have lodged complaints with Israel about the episode, which the Palestinian Authority condemned as a 'heinous crime' a 'deliberate and unlawful act' which 'constitutes a blatant and grave breach of international law.'
The day after the shooting in Jenin, during a visit to Lithuania the German chancellor said 'we are very concerned about the situation in the Gaza Strip and also about the intensification of the Israeli army's military operations there.
'We are urging, above all, that humanitarian aid finally reaches the Gaza Strip without delay, and also reaches the people there, because, as we hear from the United Nations, there is now a real threat of famine.'
On May 13 a study by the Bertelsmann Foundation found that over the past four years Germans had developed an increasingly negative view of Israel. In 2021 46 percent of Germans had a positive view of the country, compared with only 36 percent today, with 38 percent now viewing it negatively. Germany has seen many mass protests since the start of Israel's war in Gaza, which a majority of Germans oppose.
On May 19, two days before the Israeli military's live-fire intimidation of international diplomats, the UK, France and Canada issued a joint statement condemning the situations in Gaza and the West Bank and strongly opposing the expansion of Israeli military operations in Gaza.
While also calling on Hamas to immediately release the remaining hostages, the statement denounced 'the level of human suffering in Gaza' as 'intolerable.'
The three nations added: 'Yesterday's announcement that Israel will allow a basic quantity of food into Gaza is wholly inadequate. We call on the Israeli Government to stop its military operations in Gaza and immediately allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza.'
Israel, warned the statement, 'risks breaching international humanitarian law,' adding: 'We condemn the abhorrent language used recently by members of the Israeli Government, threatening that, in their despair at the destruction of Gaza, civilians will start to relocate. Permanent forced displacement is a breach of international humanitarian law.'
Israel had a right to defend Israelis against terrorism, 'but this escalation is wholly disproportionate.'
As a result, 'We will not stand by while the Netanyahu government pursues these egregious actions. If Israel does not cease the renewed military offensive and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid, we will take further concrete actions in response.'
In the West Bank, Israel must also 'halt settlements which are illegal and undermine the viability of a Palestinian state and the security of both Israelis and Palestinians.
'We will not hesitate to take further action, including targeted sanctions.'
On May 20, as the death toll from Israeli air strikes over the previous week reached 500, the UK summoned Israel's ambassador to London, paused talks on a new free-trade agreement, and announced further sanctions against West Bank settlers.
Israel's operation in Gaza was "incompatible with the principles that underpin our bilateral relationship,' David Lammy, the UK foreign minister, told parliament.
'It is extremism. It is dangerous. It is repellent. It is monstrous, and I condemn it in the strongest possible terms.'
All these moves 'clearly reflect growing discomfort with Israeli military actions in Gaza but also in the West Bank,' Sir John Jenkins, who served as British ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Syria and as consul-general in Jerusalem, told Arab News.
'This has been crystallized by the issue of humanitarian aid. The UN has not handled this well itself. But it's a real political problem for Western governments, with significant domestic implications, which is why the UK has also paused trade talks.'
However, he added, 'none of this will affect the Israeli decision-making process in the short term, and Western governments will be very reluctant to do anything that helps Hamas.
'But they will be increasingly keen to see a proper plan for the endgame. The question is: How much does the Trump administration support them? The news last week of the shooting of the two Israeli diplomats in Washington will only complicate this calculation.'
Israel, increasingly isolated, nevertheless remains defiant. 'The British Mandate ended exactly 77 years ago,' a spokesperson for its foreign ministry said in response to last week's criticism from the UK. 'External pressure will not divert Israel from its path in defending its existence and security against enemies who seek its destruction.'
Yet in Europe that external pressure is mounting. So much so that, after 20 years of campaigning virtually in the wilderness for 'freedom, justice and equality' for Palestinians, the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement finally finds its much-criticised methods on the cusp of becoming mainstream.
Founded in 2005, for two decades the Palestinian-led BDS and those who support it have endured international censure, based on an unquestioning acceptance of Israel's accusation that the organization's aims are merely a manifestation of antisemitism.
Now, however, as governments in Europe, shocked by Israel's latest actions and the seemingly deliberate starvation of two million people in Gaza, begin to adopt stances for which BDS has been calling for 20 years, as it marks its 20th anniversary the organisation and its work is being vindicated.
'For the first time ever, even the world's most complicit governments are being forced – due to people power and moral outrage – to publicly consider accountability measures against Israel,' the BDS said in a statement.
This was 'another clear sign that our collective popular BDS pressure is working. The taboo is broken – sanctions are the way forward to end Israel's atrocious crimes.'
Nevertheless, the organization continues to be critical of the UK, France and Canada, countries which had spent 19 months 'enabling Israel's genocide with intelligence gathering and other military means.' The statements by the three 'are far too late and fall dangerously short of meeting these States' legal obligations under international law, including the Genocide Convention and the Apartheid Convention.'
BDS says it is now stepping up its campaign to 'transform tokenism and empty threats into tangible and effective accountability measures, starting with a two-way military embargo and full-scale trade and diplomatic sanctions.'
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, keenly aware as ever of his dependence upon the support of the right-wing extremists in his cabinet, went on the offensive last week.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, he said, were siding with 'mass murderers, rapists, baby killers and kidnappers.' Astonishingly, he added, Starmer, Macron and Carney were 'on the wrong side of humanity and … the wrong side of history.'
In fact, in the wake of the Hamas-led attack of Oct. 7, 2023, all three countries came out in unequivocal support of Israel, and its right to defend itself.
What Netanyahu is refusing to acknowledge is that in the eyes of the world, the events of that day do not give Israel a carte blanche.
His apparent determination to continue the war seemingly in order to keep himself in power, and to support the Zionist extremists in his cabinet who want to see Palestine ethnically cleansed, is facing growing criticism within Israel itself.
One of the staunchest critics is Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister from 2006 to 2009, who recently told the BBC that what Israel was doing in Gaza was 'close to a war crime.'
That earned him a rebuke from a current Israeli minister, but on Friday Olmert intensified his criticism. 'A group of thugs … are running the state of Israel these days and the head of the gang is Netanyahu,' he told the BBC World Service.
He added: 'Of course they are criticizing me, they are defaming me, I accept it, and it will not stop me from criticizing and opposing these atrocious policies.'
Speaking to Arab News, Ahron Bregman, a former Israeli soldier and a senior teaching fellow in King's College London's Institute of Middle Eastern Studies, said: 'You don't have to be an expert on international humanitarian law to conclude that what the Israelis are doing in the Gaza Strip is carrying out terrible war crimes.
'European governments can't ignore this any longer, as their publics are furious, and, at last, they have started to react.'
Ideally, he said, 'it would be the UN Security Council that instructs Israel to stop the industrial killing in Gaza and the starving of the Gazans, but the Israelis seem confident that US President Donald Trump will not let such a resolution pass.
'But who knows? Sometimes, in war, there are moments which are turning points, moments that push nations of the world over the edge and make them take action to stop wars.'
Bregman believes only two courses of action 'would make the Israeli government rethink and change its criminal behaviour in Gaza.'
The first is that European countries should block trade relations with Israel — a step now being seriously considered in the European Union — and impose sanctions on the state.
But his second suggestion, coming as it does from a man who served in the Israeli army for six years and took part in the 1982 Lebanon War, shows just how far the actions of the current Israeli government have strayed from what mainstream public opinion in the country now regards as acceptable.
'Young Israelis who fought in Gaza should be stopped when trying to cross into Europe,' he said.
'They should be investigated for their actions in Gaza and arrested if there's any suspicion of war crimes.'
And, he added, 'pilots, who caused most of the damage in Gaza, should be sent automatically for trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.'