The high representative for Foreign Policy of the EU, Josep Borrell, wants the Foreign Ministers to approve his proposal on Monday as an element of pressure for the Jewish State to improve its respect for human rights in the context of the conflict in Gaza, now extended to Lebanon. This is stated in the draft Council decision that his team has prepared for Monday’s meeting in Brussels, and in which he assures that the measure is merely political and will have no financial consequences. The initiative has already aroused strong opposition in Berlin and other European capitals, which predicts that it will remain as a last political gesture by Borrell who has already left office.
“It is appropriate to suspend political dialogue with Israel as long as there are no significant improvements in respect for human rights,” states the European External Action Service (EEAS), headed by Borrell, in the preamble to the proposed decision, which has been able consult EL PAÍS. “The obligation to respect human rights under Article 2 of the Association Agreement does not cease in the event of armed conflict,” he points out.
The proposal, however, has no political significance, various diplomatic sources acknowledge. It has already been “We are always in favor of keeping the channels of dialogue open. Of course, this also applies to Israel,” the German Foreign Ministry reacted this Thursday to the letter with the proposal sent the day before by Borrell. For Berlin, the Association Agreement is the “adequate framework” precisely to address these types of issues and closing that avenue of dialogue “does not help anyone.” In a televised interview, the head of German diplomacy, Annalena Baerbock, has advanced her “no” to Borrell, although she has indicated that her Government does contemplate actions against individual Israeli ministers for possible violations of international law.
Berlin is not alone in its no to Borrell. European diplomatic sources have anticipated the discomfort that the proposal, inspired by the demand made in February by Spain and Ireland, has caused in a group of countries – much larger than the traditional hard core of States reticent to criticize Israel that make up Germany, Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic—which consider that it will not help resolve the conflict and will make the division that this issue causes within the Twenty-seven even more visible. The fear is that this step, which they regret has come “without prior notice”, will also complicate the head of European diplomacy.
The justification for the measure proposed by Borrell – which does not imply the suspension in itself of the entire Association Agreement, which has marked the EU’s relations with Israel since 2000, but only of the political dialogue – is the conclusion reached by the European External Action Service after analyzing for months the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Government in terms of human rights in the context of the conflict in the Middle East: Israel “has not responded sufficiently” to date (November) to the concerns expressed by Brussels. Hence, he notes, “the EU should invoke the human rights clause to suspend political dialogue with Israel.”
The decision itself, according to the draft, is very short: just three articles in which it decides the suspension of the “political dialogue with Israel”, that this measure can be discussed in the Association Council “if Israel so requires” and the entry into force of the same as soon as it is published in the Official Journal of the EU.
What extends the legal text is the long preamble, which details, since the outbreak of the conflict after the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel on October 7, all the decisions regarding the humanitarian situation in Gaza first and in Lebanon. now, and their demands that Israel act in compliance with international law, especially humanitarian law. Without the Netanyahu Government having responded adequately so far, he highlights.
“The European Council has repeatedly called on the Israeli Government to comply with its obligations under international humanitarian law, in particular to distinguish between combatants and civilians and to apply the principle of proportionality in Gaza and Lebanon,” the text recalls. He has also time and again called on the Netanyahu government to “thoroughly and independently investigate violations of international humanitarian law and implement the legally binding orders of the United Nations International Court of Justice,” as well as to “facilitate the work of the Cross International Red”.
Despite this, the EEAS notes, “the Israeli Armed Forces have continued their military attacks in Gaza for more than a year, and against Lebanon for two months, which in many instances have resulted in a disproportionate loss of civilian life.” Furthermore, he adds, “the Israeli Government has prevented an independent investigation by international organizations.”
Similarly, although the European Council “has repeatedly condemned extremist settler violence,” “the Israeli Government has not put an end to such violence, but has indirectly encouraged the forcible seizure of Palestinian land through the so-called illegal settlement legalization law, which is contrary to international law.”
According to the EEAS, the decision to suspend political dialogue by the Twenty-Seven is more urgent than ever given the “risk of a worsening of the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.”
