“Law is interpreted for friends and applied to enemies,” Italian statesman Giovanni Giolitti once said.
There are few better examples of this than the way the European Union bends over backwards to avoid addressing Israel’s severe breaches of international law and the terms of its association agreement with the bloc.
On May 20, the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council (FAC) voted to conduct a review of whether Israel was denying Palestinians’ human rights by preventing humanitarian aid from entering Gaza.
A month later, the same body concluded: “There are indications that Israel would be in breach of its human rights obligations under Article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement.” Indications …
On June 26, EU heads of government at a European Council meeting concluded that they “noted” those indications and invited the FAC to “continue discussions” in July.
It is understandable that some initially welcomed the vote to review the EU-Israel Association Agreement back in May. It is only human to hold on to anything that gives hope that action will finally be taken to protect the human rights of the Palestinian people.
Unfortunately, the entire “debate” over the EU-Israel Association Agreement is simply a sham. It does not represent serious action on by the EU to address the atrocities Israel is committing in Gaza and elsewhere in the occupied Palestinian territory. It deflects growing criticism by giving the impression that the EU may finally be thinking of doing something. More importantly, it distracts from the obligations which the EU and its members are legally bound to fulfil.
Human rights pretences
Twenty months into Israel’s devastating war in Gaza, Israel’s breaches of human rights and international law are so extensive that there can be no doubt about their relevance to the EU-Israel Association Agreement.
They are so numerous that they must be organised into categories to capture the depth and breadth of destruction wrought onto every aspect of life in Gaza.
Israel has been accused of intentionally creating conditions calculated to destroy the possibility for Palestinian life in the Strip, which amounts to genocide. This includes domicide and the laying to waste of Gaza’s urban landscape; medicide – systematically dismantling the healthcare system; scholasticide – destroying schools, universities and libraries; ecocide – wiping out Gaza’s agriculture and nature; econocide – the devastation of Gaza’s economy; and unchilding – making childhood impossible.
More than 90 percent of Gaza’s population, or 1.9 million people, have been displaced, and in the past three months alone, over 600,000 people have been displaced again, as many as 10 times or more. A full blockade was imposed by the Israelis since March 2, and meagre aid deliveries were reinstated only in late May. Famine is widespread; 66 children have died of starvation, and more than 5,000 were hospitalised with acute malnutrition in May alone.
Under pressure from European public opinion, which is increasingly rejecting European support for Israel, the EU finally decided to do something. But that something involved a fair bit of talking and – so far – no action.
The bloc decided to vote on reviewing the EU-Israel Association Agreement. But this was nothing out of the ordinary because all association agreements should be subject to regular reviews, which can trigger either advances or scaling back the depth and breadth of relations.
In fact, those who called for the vote knew very well that suspension of the agreement requires a unanimous vote by 27 member states, which is currently impossible. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and member states, such as Germany, Italy and Hungary, have made crystal clear their unwavering support for Israel. In these circumstances, hoping for a unanimous vote to suspend the agreement is close to delusional. A qualified majority vote might suspend parts of the agreement on trade, but that is the most one can hope for.
This is hardly a ringing endorsement of the Union’s commitment to human rights and “fundamental values”. Instead, public invocations by governments and officials of Article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, which states that all areas covered by the agreement itself “shall be based on respect for human rights”, are no more than empty rhetoric.
In reality, the EU never intended for these human rights conditionalities to be taken seriously. It is easy to see why; it never specified by what criteria human rights should be assessed, and it chose not to make these assessments routine, compulsory, and public.
In this way, the EU leaves itself enough space to claim it values “human rights and fundamental values” while, in fact, “interpreting away” its own rules to avoid having to take any significant action.
Empty rhetoric
Some European states have decided to take individual action, but what they have done has been just as meaningless as the EU agreement review.
The United Kingdom suspended trade talks with Israel, but not trade. Its recent communique alongside France and Canada was trumpeted as “tougher” than the EU’s statements. Yet, the communique opposes only Israel’s “expansion of military operations in Gaza”: It takes issue only with the extension and intensification of Israel’s assault, not with the devastation wrought upon the Strip so far.
Nor does it mention the war crimes Israel has been accused of, or declare a commitment to uphold the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
In fact, despite the UK summoning Israel’s ambassador after its “tough” joint statement with France and Canada, it continued its surveillance flights over or close to Gaza’s airspace, which are suspected of gathering intelligence for the Israeli army.
France, for its part, declared it would recognise a Palestinian state in June. June came and went without recognition.
In October 2023, Spain claimed that it stopped selling weapons to Israel. In May, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez declared, “We do not do business with a genocidal state.” And yet, a Barcelona-based think tank revealed recently the existence of more than 40 contracts between Spanish state institutions and Israeli defence companies.
Germany, France, the UK and Italy also continue to supply weapons in breach of the spirit of international law.
Legal obligations
If European governments were serious about responding to Israel’s crimes, they could do that by simply abiding by their legal obligations under the various EU treaties and international law.
The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the Lisbon Treaty require the bloc to embed respect for “democracy, human rights and fundamental values” into all EU policies. This is why all association agreements have human rights conditionalities in the first place.
The Genocide Convention imposes a preventive duty to use “all means reasonably available” to prevent genocide. Already in January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accepted that Palestinians’ right to be protected from genocide may be being violated.
The actions EU states can take include, but are not limited to: halting arms contracts with the Israeli government and Israeli companies; suspending intelligence cooperation; and cutting commercial, cultural and research exchanges with and funding for Israeli private and public institutions on occupied Palestinian land. They should also support the rigorous application of international law, including backing the case against Israel at the ICJ and enforcing arrest warrants issued by the ICC.
Currently, the EU is in flagrant violation of its legal duties and its own rules. That is a direct consequence of decades of ignoring gross abuses by Israel and other associated states, including Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt.
No amount of “interpreting” law or hiding behind procedure can mask the fact that the EU is in flagrant violation of its legal obligations and the spirit of its own rules. It has a track record of ignoring continued human rights abuses in associated states, including Israel, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, and Jordan. This track record has reached an ignominious peak since October 2023.
Inaction on Gaza reveals the limits of Europe’s commitment to its self-proclaimed values: by sacrificing Palestine, Europe betrays itself.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.