Europe

The European Commission did not take long to capitulate to comments by Israel’s ambassador to the EU Avi Nir-Feldklein, who said that if the bloc wants to participate in the US plan for Gaza, it must lift the proposed penalties against Israel which EC President Ursula von der Leyen announced last month.

Within a few hours of Nir-Feldklein’s statement, EC spokesperson Paula Pinho said that the sanctions were “proposed in a given context, and if the context changes that could eventually lead to a change of the proposal.” Of course, the EU focused only on the ceasefire not on the Palestinian people’s political rights, so it is highly likely that the belated proposed measures will be reversed, despite the bureaucratic process that might be even briefer, given than there is no angering Israel with reverting to the status quo.

A peace deal, and one that serves Israeli interests, does not cancel out genocide. On the contrary, it rewarded Israel for genocide and consolidated its colonial structure to the detriment of the Palestinian people.

Back to Nir-Feldklein’s discourse of premeditated omission. There will be no “reset of EU-Israeli relations” because proposals are just proposals. The EU was careful not to jeopardise its relations with Israel; the bloc’s actions openly testified to its acceptance of genocide. But this is the Israeli narrative that sells – Israel was wronged, allegedly, by von der Leyen’s very late intention to penalise a colonial, genocidal enterprise, and the EU must now rectify its offence.