Hungary blocks EU appeal for Israel not to strike Rafah

This urged Israel to spare Rafah from a ground incursion and to "pause" firing in general so that aid could get in, but it didn’t constitute a politically binding EU communiqué, which required EU-27 consensus.

"Without being a formal EU position, it is nonetheless a majority position," EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell told the press. "It is significant," he added.

Israel has said it would attack Rafah if Palestinian group Hamas did not free Israeli hostages by Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, which is set to start on 11 March.

It has kettled some 1.5 million Palestinian refugees in the border town, with nowhere left to flee except Egypt.

And a Rafah attack would be "unconscionable", said Irish foreign minister Micheál Martin on Monday.

The EU must "do everything possible to put pressure on the Israeli government" not to go ahead, he said.

If Israel assaulted Rafah, it would mean "losing the last support they have in the world", said Luxembourg foreign minister Xavier Bettell, after Israel already killed over 28,000 people, most of them children and women, in Gaza following the 7 October attack by Hamas.

"The EU’s credibility is at stake here," also said HA Hellyer, a Middle East expert at the Royal United Services Institute think-tank in London and the Carnegie Endowment think-tank in Washington.

"It’s extraordinary that while the EU has all this [economic] leverage with the Israelis, it’s unwilling to do much more than issue limp statements," Hellyer said on Monday.

"The EU shouldn’t be issuing a joint statement urging Israel not to further attack a densely populated enclave of refugees, in a territory that Israel illegally occupies — the EU should be warning Israel of severe consequences to EU-Israeli links if it does," he said.

Hungary and the Czech Republic had a long history of vetoing EU criticism of Israel before the Gaza war.

They have also both been vetoing proposed EU sanctions on 12 violent Israeli settlers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, whom Borrell said were "doing what we can call ‘terrorist actions’ against Palestinian people".

But the Czechs left Hungary on their own over Rafah on Monday.

And EU expectations are they will go the same way on settlers before long.

The Czech foreign minister Jan Lipavský said in Brussels on Monday he didn’t oppose settler sanctions, so long as the EU did not equate settlers with Hamas by putting them in the same blacklist.

Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped some 200 more on 7 October last year.

Borrell said on Monday there was just "one party" now blocking the settler move, alluding to Hungary.

The Polish foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, also said "the objection of one country" stood in the way of new Middle East sanctions.

"There’s only one. There’s always the one," an EU diplomat said, referring to Hungary.

Meanwhile, Belgium, France, the UK, and the US have already imposed national-level bans on extremist Israeli settlers.

And Belgian foreign minister Hadja Lahbib said on Monday "many European countries are ready to follow us" if there was no EU-level action.

Ireland’s Martin said: "If we don’t get unanimity, we’re prepared to do it ourselves. I know others are considering it as well".

West Bank ‘boiling’

Hungary’s foreign minister Péter Szijjártó made no effort to tell international media why he vetoed Israel’s action on Monday.

His spokesman, Zoltan Kovacs, tweeted criticism about EU sanctions on Russia and of US senators instead.

Szijjártó previously claimed EU sanctions on Israeli settlers would cause antisemitism.

But the Hungary-Israel axis is based more on personal ties between Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, both of whom are far-right populists, Hungarian opposition MP Ágnes Vadai previously told EUobserver.

Orbán also routinely holds up EU-Russia sanctions and has friendly ties with Russia’s authoritarian leader, Vladimir Putin.

And MEPs have urged member states to suspend his vote in the EU Council and to skip Hungary’s EU presidency, which starts in July, due to Orbán’s own thuggish rule at home.

"I will continue pushing [for the Israeli settler blacklist] because if we want to keep our credibility, we have to denounce what is happening in the West Bank," said Borrell on Monday.

"The West Bank is boiling, and if they [the Israelis] do not let people go to the mosques during the festivities, during Ramadan, the situation could become still worse," he said.