More than 300 former European diplomats and officials have written to EU leaders urging a “far more” decisive response to the war in Gaza, including a full suspension of the bloc’s cooperation agreement with Israel.
Published soon after the opening of the UN general assembly in New York, the letter from the 314 signatories also calls on all EU member states to recognise the state of Palestine, joining 147 countries to have done so. France, Belgium, the UK, Canada and Australia, among others, are expected to show support for a Palestinian state later this month at the UN.
The statement followed the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, issuing her strongest condemnation yet of the Israeli government, as she called for sanctions on extremist ministers and a suspension of the trade part of the EU-Israel association agreement. “Man-made famine can never be a weapon of war,” she said in her sharpest comments on Israel’s 23-month war that has brought humanitarian catastrophe to Gaza.
She also announced a freeze on financial support to the Israeli government: €6m (£5.2m) annual regional funds and a €14m grant for public institutions.
Michael Doyle, a former EU ambassador and co-organiser of the letter, said: “It was good to hear the announcements yesterday, but of course now we want to see those words put into action.”
But the letter, which has been sent to von der Leyen and the EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, goes further than the steps outlined by the commission president on Wednesday. It calls for the full suspension of the EU-Israel agreement and urges the union to show leadership in global bodies by putting pressure on Israel to comply with international law.
“We cannot stand idly by, watching Gaza reduced to rubble and its inhabitants to destitution and starvation,” said the former EU ambassador Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff, another co-organiser, who served as the EU’s envoy to the occupied Palestinian territories. “The issue is whether the EU and like-minded nations are going to stand up for basic humanity and for the values that underpin the postwar international order.”
The letter was signed by nearly 140 people who worked as EU diplomats or senior commission officials, as well as 175 diplomats for EU member states, including Belgium, France, Spain, Italy and Germany. The support from German and Italian diplomats is seen as especially significant, as both countries are helping to block a proposal to suspend EU research funds to Israeli organisations.
To pass the proposal requires a majority of 15 member states, representing 65% of the EU’s population.
By contrast, the EU-Israel association agreement, which created a free trade area and deepened joint work in energy, environment and research, can only be suspended by unanimity. Sanctions against individuals also require consensus.
The EU has been deeply divided over how to respond to Israel’s war on Gaza, with staunch allies of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government such as Hungary and the Czech Republic on one side, and those such as Belgium, Ireland and Spain on the other.
It is the fourth letter the group has sent since July, a sequence of missives that marks rare public criticism of the EU by some of its most senior former employees.
Separately, the European parliament passed its first resolution on Gaza for years. The non-binding vote, titled Gaza at breaking point, expressed support for suspending the trade part of the EU-Israel association agreement and imposing sanctions on Israeli extremist ministers.
The text was supported by 305 MEPs, although 151 voted against and 122 abstained on the issue. Despite the fact some recommendations came from von der Leyen, a Christian Democrat, significant numbers of centre-right MEPs voted against the text, as did large numbers of far-right and extremist politicians.
Hilde Vautmans, the Belgian liberal who led negotiations on the text, said the result was a message to EU member states and the commission: “No more excuses, time to act now.”
