’Procedural’ issues weaken EU pressure on Israel
The European Commission has yet to respond to Irish and Spanish demands to review an association agreement with Israel, following weekend reports children were starving to death in northern Gaza.
"We are dealing with it. We are analysing, processing it in line with the internal procedures," Peter Stano, the EU commission’s foreign policy spokesperson, told reporters on Monday (11 March).
The letter, sent mid-February, asked the commission whether Israel was complying with its obligations to respect human rights in Gaza.
It was part of wider EU efforts to pressure Israel into scaling back its war in Gaza, where close to 31,000 people have been killed since the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel.
But the EU commission insisted any changes to the association agreement with Israel required a unanimous decision among all 27 EU states, a process that could take weeks.
And it maintained that Israel had the right to defend itself in Gaza, while at the same time calling for an immediate humanitarian pause in order to deliver desperately needed aid.
"Now more and more countries of the EU are calling for a ceasefire. The position of the EU is a humanitarian pause, immediate humanitarian pause or pauses," said Stano.
This would then be followed by the release of Israeli hostages and a ceasefire, said Stano.
German weapons
But calls for a humanitarian pause have yet to prevent Germany from sending arms supplies to Israel for use in Gaza, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri), a Swedish think-tank.
After the United States, Germany is Israel’s second-largest arms supplier.
"German arms exports to Israel are largely in the form of ships, and Saar-6 Corvettes delivered to Israel have also been used in the context of the current war in Gaza," said Zain Hussain, a researcher at Sipri.
Germany has supplied Israel with engines for the Merkava tank and the Namer armoured personnel carrier, which have been used by Israel in the current war.
Hussain also said companies in the Netherlands produced parts for the F-35 aircraft, including those which have been sent to Israel.
"In this way, different states, including the Netherlands and the UK, are already involved in F-35s that have been delivered to and used by Israel in Gaza," he said, noting that a Dutch court had last month ordered the halt for F-35 parts to Israel.
Meanwhile, the EU procedural delays and arms deliveries come at a time when United Nations officials say hundreds of thousands of Gazans are close to starvation, with almost no aid having reached northern Gaza in weeks.
Starvation
"The child deaths we feared are here," said Adele Khodr at UNICEF, an UN agency working to help children, in a statement last week.
The commission says it remains committed to sending supplies and aid to Palestinians.
Last Friday, EU commission president Ursula von der Leyen was in Cyprus to back a maritime corridor to send aid from Cyprus to Gaza.
Spanish NGO Open Arms was also to deliver some 200 tonnes of aid from Cyprus to Gaza, but its scheduled weekend departure has been delayed by technical issues, according to Cypriot media.