EU refuses to act against Israel despite its blatant war crimes in the Gaza Stip. Elsewhere, criticism is loud and clear: in the Global South, among former diplomats and in Israel itself.
The European Union continues to refuse any action against Israel in response to its brutal warfare in the Gaza Strip, even after the most recent plans for deporting and incarcerating the Palestinian population. The latest decision to do nothing was affirmed by EU foreign ministers at their meeting on 16 July. They argued that a promise of a short-term expansion of Israeli aid deliveries into Gaza was sufficient grounds for blocking the demands of a few EU countries, including Spain, to at least suspend the EU’s Association Agreement with Israel. Germany in particular has been a strong advocate of blocking any practical measures against Israel’s far-right government. And Berlin can rely on support from the right-wing governments of Italy and Hungary. Yet the voices of criticism and active protest against Israel’s war on Gaza are growing louder. Even a former Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, is saying that the planned enclosed “humanitarian city” to be created by Israel on the rubble of Gaza, in which some 600,000 Palestinians are to be kept as a first step, will in fact be “a concentration camp”. Meanwhile, a gathering of thirty or so countries in Bogotá is seeking to introduce concrete measures against Israel. This “emergency summit” is calling out the West’s “exceptionalism” expressed in its decision to ignore international law.
In the Columbian capital, Bogotá, a number of countries making up The Hague Group came together last Tuesday for their first ‘emergency summit’. The organisation was founded on 31 January in The Hague to stop further violations of international law by Israel in the Gaza war. It seeks to call those responsible for war crimes to account. This move also means countering the “exceptionalism” of Western states and the “broader erosion of international law”, as South Africa’s minister for international relations, Roland Lamola, expressed the group’s mission last week.[1] Apart from South Africa the members of The Hague Group include Bolivia, Honduras, Columbia, Cuba, Malaysia, Namibia und Senegal. The group is pushing above all for an end to arms supplies to Israel. Also invited to the ‘emergency summit’, which finished on Wednesday, are around two dozen other countries. Although most of these can be described as part of the Global South, they also include some European states like Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Slovenia, and Norway. The meeting is intended as a forum for finding new ways of isolating Israel in response to its blatant war crimes in the Gaza Strip and stopping the ongoing violence against Palestinians. (more...)
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