When the European Parliament brought a decaffeinated resolution forward with the support of the measures announced by the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, so that Israel stops the genocide that is being carried out in the Gaza Strip, it was already glimpsed that the European response was going to be warm.
Although a day before the UN Independent Commission concluded that Israel is committing genocide and that the Israeli government announced a final offensive on Gaza City, the European Commission’s proposal has remained in the imposition of some tariff Israeli extremist settlers. The inaction of Brussels clashes with the Convention on Genocide, which dates from 1948, which remarks that states should not only punish genocide, but also prevent it.
Although the European Commission’s statement admits that “after Israel’s recent decision to impose a blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza, the humanitarian situation has deteriorated to an unprecedented and unsustainable level, promoted by the continuous bombardments, military operations, massive displacements and the collapse of basic services”, the measures that can be approved will barely be an impact on sales of sales of products Israelis to the EU, which in 2024 amounted to 15.9 billion euros.
The EU trade commissioner, Maros Sefcovic, explained that the commission’s proposal “is not just a matter of commerce or figures. There is a lot of political burden in this decision. We wanted to move a record quickly, since there were many expectations and we had to use the instruments for humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people to arrive.” But the European Commission continues to maintain its position that it cannot speak of a genocide in Gaza, covering that international courts have not yet adopted a decision in this regard.
The findings of the experts who investigate for the UN join what they had already denouncing human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch or B’Tselm, as well as the UN Rapporteur and numerous experts in genocide, including the main international association of specialized academics in the field of studies of this crime, one of the most serious in the eyes of the international community.
The report concludes that Israel is perpetrating a genocide because it has committed four of the five acts that define it as such when they are executed to “try to destroy, totally or partly, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”, among them, the murders, the physical and mental damage to the Gazatí population, living conditions calculated to cause destruction and measures destined to prevent births.
Daniel Levy, exnegociator and advisor to the Israeli government, points to Eldiario.es that “there are two lines out of synchrony, one for the Israeli destruction of Gaza and another for its consequences. It may become irreversible how Israel is perceived globally, even in the West, along with the growing need for measures to contain and dissuade Israel.”
“Until that happens, Netanyahu is advancing with ethnic cleaning and devastation of the city of Gaza, making most of the area permanently uninhabitable. The public disgust in much of the West for what Israel is doing, with the complicity of its own leaders, is slowly translating into a change of policy,” he adds.
Punish and prevent genocide
The message of the commission investigators is crystalline: while these atrocities continue, the rest of the countries cannot look the other way. According to the Genocide Convention, dating from 1948, states should not only punish genocide, but also prevent it. In this way, the report adds more pressure on those countries that treat Israel as an exception to international norms, because it requires political action.
“The duty to prevent and sanction the genocide is applied not only to the responsible state, but to all States parties to the Genocide Convention and, in fact, to all states according to customary international law,” says the text. Among the possible measures that can be taken, they recommend the cessation of the transfer of weapons and other military equipment to Israel; Ensure that people and companies in their territories do not participate in the aid or assistance for the genocide commission or in the incitement to commit genocide; and take measures for accountability through investigations and judicial procedures.
“The international community cannot remain silent before the genocidal campaign launched by Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza,” said Navi Pillay, the president of the expert commission – and a distinguished international jurist who, among other things, was commissioned from the United Nations Nations, magistrate of the International Criminal Court (CPI) and president of the International Criminal Court for Ruanda. “All states have the legal obligation to use all means reasonably available to stop the genocide in Gaza.” Otherwise, he added, every day of inaction “erodes the credibility of the international community.”
Along the same lines, Elisenda Calvet, Professor of Public International Law at the University of Barcelona (UB) and a member of the International Association of Academics of Genocide (IAGS), explained recently in an interview with Eldiario.es that the prohibition of genocide is what is called International Law “An imperative norm, that is, that forces all states because it protects the essential values of the international community.” “Everyone has the obligation to prevent genocide,” he said.
When presenting his conclusions, Pillay was clear and warned that when “signs and clear evidence of genocide appear, the absence of actions to stop it is equivalent to complicity.” In this sense, Sonia Boulos, a professor of International Law at the Antonio de Nebrija University, explains to Eldiario.es that the International Court of Justice, the highest judicial body of the United Nations, has established a distinction between the obligation to prevent and complicity in genocide. “Complicity ‘requires that some positive action has been adopted aimed at providing help or assistance to the perpetrators of the genocide’, while the violation of the obligation to prevent ‘is simply from the lack of adoption and implementation of adequate measures to prevent the genocide from being committed,” he says.
After the last report that points to Israel with the finger, about twenty humanitarian organizations ask world leaders not to stay with crossed arms. “Many of us have been in Gaza. We have met innumerable Palestinians who have lost limbs as a result of Israeli bombings. We have personally met children so traumatized by daily air attacks that cannot sleep. Some cannot speak. Others have told us that they want to die to meet with their parents in heaven. We have met families that eat food for animals to survive and grad them. World leaders do not act. “States must use all political, economic and legal instruments at their disposal to intervene. Rhetoric and half inks are not enough. This moment demands a decisive action.”
A European proposal that can decay
After the United Nations Committee report, the Brussels proposal shows the weakness of the EU to show itself as a weight actor on the geopolitical board, since now it will be the member countries that will have to vote if they give green light to the commission measures. So far Germany, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic have been contrary to any plan that involves the minimum punishment of Israel. As the commercial sanction needs qualified majority of countries in the Council, it is not unreasonable that is lying like other previous ones.
Only two months ago the European Commission has already tried to approve without success the suspension of scientific cooperation with Israel within the framework of the Horizon program as a measure to stop the attacks of the Israeli army on the Gazati population.
Before the political storm that has been unleashed by the pressures of the countries, the high representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs, Kaja Kallas, chose not to pour more firewood, after having accused Germany of capturing the block of states that is lying the measures against Israel, in an interview in Euronews. This Tuesday the German Foreign Minister Friedrich Merz published a video in the social network X promising that his government will fight against anti -Semitism in the reopening of a synagogue destroyed by the Nazis in Munich. To avoid more confrontations, Kallas just said that “the political lines of the countries have not moved much”, dropping the possibility that everything is in a vain attempt by the commission.
The response of the governments of the EU countries contrasts with the mobilization in the European streets, where in recent weeks there have been numerous demonstrations with special transcendence in Spain, where the cycling return had to be suspended in its last stage by the protests. In the European Commission they are aware of the impact on the public opinion of the humanitarian crisis suffered by the Palestinian people. Before the question of why the commission now moves, when in August the 62,000 Palestinian dead in the strip were exceeded, Kallas has admitted that “there has been a change in the public opinion of the Member States to put the suffering of the suffering of the population of Gaza”.
Source: www.eldiario.es
