Giorgio Cafiero is the CEO and founder of Gulf State Analytics, a Washington-based geopolitical risk consultancy.
The European Union was united in condemning Hamas's attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, in which approximately 1,200 Israelis were killed. But the 27-member bloc has been deeply divided in its response to Israel's war of retaliation in Gaza, which has killed more than 18,000 Palestinians, including nearly 8,000 children, according to Gaza's health authorities.
On one end of the spectrum are Germany, Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic—all firmly behind Israel's bombing and ground invasion of Gaza. On the other end are Belgium, Ireland, Portugal and Spain, which have all condemned Israeli war crimes, demanded an immediate cease-fire and expressed serious concerns about the humanitarian disaster in Gaza. Belgium's deputy prime minister, Petra De Sutter, even called on the Belgian government to impose sanctions on Israel over its devastating bombing campaign. "The rain of bombs is inhumane," she said. "It is clear that Israel does not care about the international demands for a cease-fire."
The prime ministers of Belgium, Ireland and Spain, along with Malta, are now pushing for an EU leaders' summit that would press for a cease-fire in Gaza. "We must call urgently for all the parties to declare a lasting humanitarian cease-fire that can lead to an end of hostilities," they wrote in a letter to European Council President Charles Michel. "It is time for the European Union to act. Our credibility is at stake."
The fact that the EU was so united against Russia after its invasion of Ukraine, but is now unable to collectively condemn Israeli war crimes, exposes the West's hypocrisy.
- Giorgio Cafiero
Six days after Hamas's attack, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, traveled to Israel and declared the EU's full support for Israel's military response in Gaza. "I know that how Israel responds will show that it is a democracy," she said, standing next to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But Von der Leyen, who is German, did not consult with other members of the EU before her trip, and there was immediate backlash in Brussels. European diplomats and lawmakers criticized her for not emphasizing the need for Israel to respect international law and exercise restraint to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza, as the death toll drastically rose.
Von der Leyen had effectively spoken for all of the EU. "She simply said Israel has the right to defend itself, full stop," an unnamed European diplomat told Politico. "That is not the line member states agreed."
Von der Leyen faced further backlash, including from hundreds of her own staff, when she didn't mention the EU's support for Palestinian statehood in a subsequent speech in Washington, despite a two-state solution being a core European position. A senior EU official told Politico that Von der Leyen was "airing her own personal views and presenting an unbalanced view of where the EU stood on the crisis in the Middle East."
By contrast, the EU's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has taken a far more moderate line. "It should be possible to recognize Israel's right to defend itself, and at the same time be outraged by what is happening to civilians in Gaza and the West Bank," Borrell said late last month at a forum in Barcelona co-chaired by Jordan's foreign minister. He went further, adding: "It should be possible to defend the right of the Palestinians to have a state, without being labeled antisemitic. It should be possible to criticize the policy of the Israeli government, because governments of any country can be criticized, without being accused of harming or disliking Jews."
There is no escaping how the history of World War II contributes to these deep divisions within the EU over the Gaza crisis. But so too do contemporary European politics, which have lurched further to the right in many countries.
"In Germany, guilt about the Holocaust determines the policy discourse," said Erwin van Veen, a conflict researcher at the Netherlands-based Clingendael Institute, in an interview with Democracy in Exile. "The German political elite expressed its support for Israel's slaughter in Gaza in response to Oct. 7 with the slogan 'Nie wieder ist jetzt' ("never again is now"), effectively pretending that the gruesome Hamas attack was existential in nature—it was not."
"In contrast, Ireland's own history of colonial occupation by the British means it recognizes discrimination and repressive violence more readily," he added.
The fact that the EU was so united against Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, but is now unable to collectively condemn Israeli war crimes, exposes the West's hypocrisy in the view of many countries from the Global South. Some Western officials have quietly, if anonymously, admitted the double standard. "What we said about Ukraine has to apply to Gaza," a senior diplomat from a G7 country told the Financial Times. "Otherwise we lose all our credibility"
It's no surprise that the backlash is especially acute across the Arab world. "Naturally, international law is never applied consistently, but the callousness with which some EU member states have indirectly degraded Palestinian life has created substantial negative perceptions among Arab populations," van Veen said.
Divisions within the EU over Israel's war in Gaza, and the bloc's failure to live up to its stated commitment to the Palestinians, are once again revealing its lack of influence in the Middle East.
- Giorgio Cafiero
Yet when it comes to Israel-Palestine and the Middle East at large, such divisions among EU members are not new. These policy differences are deeply entrenched and reflective of the fact that all countries in the bloc pursue their own national interests and often go their own ways, despite talk in Brussels of a more common stance in the region. This has been the case going back to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, when the United Kingdom (then a member of the EU, pre-Brexit) was a key partner and supporter, while countries like France very publicly opposed the war.
Although the EU officially supports a two-state solution, Israel's closest partners in the bloc, such as Germany, almost always stand in the way of meaningful action that Brussels could take to bring about its stated "vision of an independent and sovereign state of Palestine." That includes putting diplomatic pressure on Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians. Meanwhile, the EU's most Israel-friendly countries have no qualms continually supplying Israel with arms. They also shield Israel from accountability at the United Nations for its continued violations of international law in Gaza and the West Bank.
European arms exports to Israel might trail those of the United States in size, but they are just as relevant to maintaining this status quo in policy. While more than 80 percent of Israel's weapons imports are from the U.S., two EU member state follow in a distant second and third: Germany, which has supplied some 15 percent of Israeli arms in the past 20 years, and Italy, with just under three percent. And German weapons exports to Israel "have risen nearly tenfold from last year," as Reuters reported recently, "with Berlin treating permit requests as a priority" since Oct. 7. According to a recent report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Italy's arms sales include parts for training and combat aircraft used in Gaza. Italian defense companies have reportedly sold Israel on average around €12 million in arms each year from 2013 to 2022.
Political currents in Europe have also benefited the Israeli government. The rise of far-right parties across the continent, including Germany's Alternative für Deutschland and France's National Assembly, fervently support Israel's worst conduct. The Party for Freedom (PVV) led by the anti-Islam firebrand Geert Wilders recently won big in the latest Dutch election. Wilders and his supporters hail the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Wilders has also called for Palestinians to be to relocated to Jordan, pushing the old trope (popular among Israel's Likud and other right-wing parties) that Jordan is indistinguishable from Palestine.
Under Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Hungary's right-wing nationalist government has been a close supporter of Netanyahu's policies. In the aftermath of Oct. 7, Orban's government effectively declared a ban on any pro-Palestinian demonstrations, in the name of preventing rallies supporting "terrorist organizations." And when the United Nations General Assembly voted on a "humanitarian truce" in Gaza in late October, Hungary was one of only four EU states, along with Austria, Croatia and the Czech Republic, to oppose it.
For these various far-right parties, fervent support for Israel is animated by their own anti-immigrant and Islamophobic views. From Wilders' PVV to Orban's Fidesz, "Israel represents a model nation amid Arab and Muslim neighbors, and they often draw connections between Israel's actions and debates surrounding immigration and integration within European societies," Francesco Salesio Schiavi, a Middle East researcher at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies in Milan, told Democracy in Exile.
Divisions within the EU over Israel's war in Gaza, and the bloc's failure to live up to its stated commitment to the Palestinians, are once again revealing its lack of influence in the Middle East. Given the potential for the war to fuel more unrest across the region, with the risk of a regional conflict bringing in Hezbollah in Lebanon and perhaps Iran, and to exacerbate existing tensions in Europe over migration and refugees, every member of the EU has much to lose while this war drags on.
"The EU's failure to have a unanimous voice on the Israeli-Palestinian issue demonstrates Brussels's limitations in shaping the bloc's foreign policy, stifling its efforts to portray itself as a cohesive and strategically minded geopolitical actor," Schiavi said. The EU insists it is committed to supporting the "international rules-based order," but it cannot actually act on that rhetoric by coming together to condemn Israeli war crimes for what they are and press for an urgent cease-fire in Gaza.
