MORE than 200 former European Union ambassadors and senior diplomatic staff from EU nation states have signed a public letter calling for urgent action over Israel’s war in Gaza and unlawful actions in the West Bank.
If the EU will not act collectively, member states must take steps individually or in smaller groups to support human rights and uphold international law, yesterday’s letter said, laying out possible approaches.
They include suspending arms export licences, barring trade in goods and services with illegal settlements and barring European data centres from receiving, storing or processing data from Israeli government or commercial sources if it relates to Israel’s ‘presence and activities in Gaza and elsewhere in the occupied territories’.
Signatories, totalling 209, include 110 former ambassadors and two of the most senior diplomats in the EU – Alain Le Roy, former secretary general of the European External Affairs service, and Carlo Trojan, former secretary general of the European Commission.
“This struck a chord,” said Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff, former EU representative to the Palestinian territory and part of a steering group of six former diplomats co-ordinating the initiative which began in mid-July.
This letter, issued ahead of an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers on Friday and Saturday, was the third public call for action, and the first calling for nations to act individually if the EU does not take collective action.
Furthermore:
• Estimates suggest that just since an earlier letter (of July 28) more than 2,600 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, many of them women and children, with more than 12,000 injured;
• Compounding the totally inadequate humanitarian access to Gaza, the Israeli government has continued to prevent UNRWA and 100 international NGOs from delivering any aid since March 2, obstructed the deliveries of other traditional experienced suppliers whilst prioritising the militarisation of aid supplied by the GHF and its mercenaries, in violation of all UN Humanitarian principles, leading to thousands of desperate and hungry Palestinians being killed or injured whilst seeking this assistance;
• International journalists are denied access to Gaza, whilst more than 200 locally-based journalists and media workers have now been killed, including 11 in recent targeted attacks;
• Israeli ministers have approved plans to build 3,400 housing units in the E1 area of Palestine, thereby cutting off East Jerusalem from the West Bank and dividing the territory in two, the openly declared aim being to sabotage the long-standing two-state solution which is backed by the vast majority of UN member states and the EU and is the only viable way for the two peoples to live in peace and security; and
• Violent settlers continue to run amok in the West Bank leading, inter alia, to the recent murder of Odeh Hathalin, a well-known peaceful West Bank human rights campaigner.
“There is such dismay now within the institutions, people are saying enough is enough,” Mr Kühn von Burgsdorff told the UK’s Guardian.
“We can’t stay paralysed if the 27 (member states) can’t take action, that betrays our values. So we have proposed nine actions that can be taken at the state level or by groups of states.
“European governments are losing credibility not just in the global south but with our own citizens, in every member state.”
He cited polling from his native Germany, traditionally a staunch supporter of Israel, which showed 80 per cent of the population disagree with Israel’s actions in Gaza and two-thirds want the government to take action.
More Palestinian families left Gaza City after a night of Israeli shelling on its outskirts, as Israelis launched a day of nationwide protests calling for hostages to be released and the war in Gaza to end.
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