The 27 EU countries find it difficult to find a united voice on Gaza

For demonstrators waving Palestinian flags outside the EU buildings in Brussels, this is the moment that everything could change.

An EU report to the Ministers of Foreign Affairs had discovered that there were indications that Israel had violated human rights obligations under the EU-Israel Association Agreement, before the Summit of European Union leaders on Thursday.

The European Union is the largest trading partner in Israel, and the demonstrators demanded that the EU suspend its 25 -year trade agreement on Israel’s actions in Gaza.

But their hopes that EU leaders would accept to suspend the agreement with Israel were quickly destroyed, because despite the report, deep divisions remain during the war in Gaza.

The demonstrators were supported by more than 100 NGOs and charitable organizations.

In 20 months of Israeli military operations, more than 55,000 gasans were killed, according to the Ministry of Health managed by Hamas. 1.9 million people were moved.

Israel also imposed a total blockage of humanitarian aid deliveries in Gaza in early March, which partially relaxed after 11 weeks after the pressure of the American allies and the warnings of global experts that half a million people faced the famine.

Since then, the UN says that more than 400 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli shots or bombings while trying to reach food distribution centers led by an American and Israeli organization. 90 others were also said to have been killed by Israeli forces while trying to approach UN convoys and other aid groups.

“Each red line has been crossed in Gaza,” said Agnes Bertrand-Sanz from Oxfam to the BBC.

“Each rule has been raped. It is really high time for the European Union to act.”

As the report was made public, he fell to the head of foreign policy Kaja Kallas to explain what the European Union would then do.

The first objective of the EU would be to “change the situation” on the ground in Gaza, she said. If this did not happen, “other measures” would be discussed next month on how to suspend the association agreement.

“We will contact Israel for, you know, present our observation,” she stumbled in an unusually defaulting way. “Because this is the objective of the Member States, for really, you know … Being very, very sure of the feelings we have here.”

NGOs said the EU had missed the opportunity to take action and that the response was low.

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs has described the review “a complete moral and methodological failure”.

For some EU criticisms, the episode was a living example of how the EU can speak of a good game of being the world’s largest donor of humanitarian aid in Gaza, but finds it difficult to present any coherent or powerful voice to match it.

As the largest world market of 450 million people, the EU has a great economic weight, but it does not result in a political influence.

“The fact that European countries and the United Kingdom do not do more to put pressure on Israel and to enforce international humanitarian law, it is very difficult for these countries to be credible,” said Olivier de Schutter, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights.

“War crimes are committed on a very large scale in Gaza, there is a debate on the question of whether it is equivalent to a genocide, but even if there is no genocide, there is a duty to act.”

De Schutter fears that the EU soft power will be lost and its inaction makes it much more difficult to persuade African countries, Asia in Latin America, to support Europe by condemning the Russian war in Ukraine, for example.

Israel maintains that he acts in international law and that his mission is to destroy Hamas and bring back the remaining hostages taken when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. About 1,200 people were killed in the attack, which triggered Israel’s offensive in Gaza.

As aion of 27 countries, the internal political reality in Europe makes it unlikely that EU leaders will support the opinions of the majority of Member States on Gaza.

EU EU countries have recognized Palestine as a state, and among which Ireland, Spain, Belgium, Slovenia and Sweden had prompted the suspension of the European Union agreement with Israel.

At the heart of decision -making of the EU foreign policy in Brussels is the fact that decisions must be unanimous, and therefore only one dissident voice can prevent the EU from taking measures.

In this case, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic are all opposite.

Austria hopes that the EU exam will arouse action, but not necessarily a suspension of the treaty with Israel.

“Everything I heard in this regard will not help the inhabitants of Gaza,” said Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger. “What would cause this, however, is a deterioration, if not a complete ventilation of the dialogue that we currently have with Israel.”

The position of Germany on Israel has often been shaped by its role in the Holocaust and the Second World War.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz says that the “current level of attacks against Gaza can no longer be justified by the fight against Hamas”, but he refused to consider suspending or terminating the agreement.

Slovakia and Hungary are considered more closely politically aligned to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu than many other EU countries.

Among the main actors advocating the more strict measures against the government of Netanyahu is Ireland.

His Minister of Foreign Affairs, Simon Harris, condemned the EU treatment of the exam.

“Our response in relation to Gaza was far too slow and far too many people have been left to die while the genocide was made,” he said.

Israel rejects the burden of genocide and when she closed her embassy in Dublin last December, he accused Ireland of anti -Semitism.

Europe has recently been away from Washington on major world issues, notably Ukraine and Iran – with President Donald Trump in favor of direct talks with the Vladimir Putin of Russia and Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.

The United States may not be in a mood to listen to, but on Gaza, the EU had trouble gathering a unified voice on Gaza, not to mention it.

Additional report by Bruno Boelpaep, principal producer in Europe.