The foreign affairs council on Monday in Brussels focused on Russia’s war of agression against Ukraine and the alarming situation in the Middle East but did not result in any concrete decisions on any of the main issues.
Despite some recent Ukrainian military successes, Russia has escalated missile and drone attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine and remains a threat to Europe. The Council discussion therefore focused on the need to continue assistance to Ukraine, including military support, High Representative Josep Borrell said at the press conference on Monday evening after the meeting.
“Ministers agreed that this is not the moment to weaken our support to Ukraine. On the contrary: it is the moment to do more and faster. With financial resources, military equipment, by training soldiers, and [providing] all Ukraine needs to defend itself.” He could not say how long time the war would continue but apparently no side in the war is ready to seriously discuss a ceasefire.
The talks on the situation in the Middle East included for the first-time separate exchanges with foreign ministers from Israel and Arab countries. Expectations were high before the meeting, with Belgium’s foreign minister and other ministers calling for a permanent ceasefire or a humanitarian ceasefire and for a political solution based on two states as the only sustainable solution.
“I will not talk about the peace process, but about the two-state solution process,” the High Representative said in his door step remarks upon arrival. “If we are serious about that, we have to study the underlining causes that prevent this solution from being implemented. Certainly, Hamas is one of them - an important one - but there are others.”
But the newly appointed Israeli foreign minister, Israel Katz, did not have any mandate to discuss the “the day” after the war. Until now, his government continues to delay the discussion until after the war. Katz showed photos of the hostages, including a one-year-old baby, and said that he had come to discuss the hostage situation and to win EU’s support for Israel’s war goal to dismantle Hamas.
In Israel, critical voices are heard from military experts and the families of the hostages that the two goals of securing the release of all hostages and dismantling Hamas’ military infrastructure are incompatible. Instead of prolonging the war in Gaza indefinitely, and risking a full-scale war with Hezbollah in the north, Israel should focus on a hostage deal with Hamas and remove it from power at another time.
Instead of engaging with the EU ministers about an exit strategy and a future political solution, Katz surprised the ministers by showing them videos of an artificial island off the coast of Gaza and a railway linking the region to India. These projects were relevant some years ago when he was transport minister and could have improved the economic situation in Gaza.
Now they had nothing or little to do with the issues we were discussing and Katz could have made better use of his time, Borrell said at the press conference.
He himself might also have spoiled the dialogue by his statements before the meeting. In a speech on Friday in Spain, he claimed that Israel had created and financed Hamas which is absurd. Hamas did not recognize Israel’s right to exist and derailed the Oslo Peace Process by its suicide attacks.
Borrell continues to send mixed messages that his spokesperson later has to clarify. The two-state solution is the only internationally accepted solution but it cannot be imposed from the outside. It should be the end goal of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians but the details in such a solution must be agreed by the two parties.
Borrell did not disclose any details about the “two-state solution process”. He said that he had shared with EU member states ideas for an EU internal discussion on a comprehensive approach to re-initiate the peace process in the Middle East, building on the work done in the context of the so-called “Peace Day Effort”. He would work towards a preparatory peace conference in the future.
No peace process without new elections
But for the peace process to get started and succeed, elections on both sides are necessary. Palestinian elections are long overdue and necessary to give legitimacy to the Palestinian leadership. Borrell has said in the past that there is no place for Hamas in Gaza but did not say now if Hamas might be allowed to participate in the elections if it would denounce its terrorist ideology.
Israel has had too many elections in recent years but new elections now are more urgent than ever. If the opinion polls are right, the current far-right coalition government, which is responsible for the failures on 7 October, will lose its majority. But even a new government which is more supportive to a two-state solution will insist that a future Palestinian state will have to be demilitarized.
Instead, the focus during the meeting was on the humanitarian situation in Gaza. Everybody agreed that the death toll among civilians is excessive, Borrell said. The EU ministers agreed that the catastrophic situation is the absolute and most imminent priority. Borrell claimed that less than 100 trucks with humanitarian aid are entering Gaza every day. This is unacceptable since the number of trucks before the war was more than 500 per day, he said.
Israel says that those tracks before the war transported more than basic humanitarian supplies. According to Israeli figures, about 10,000 trucks have entered Gaza since the beginning of the war and the average daily number is increasing with more border crossing opening. On Sunday, 260 trucks carrying humanitarian aid entered the Gaza Strip but it is too early to say if this signals an increasing trend.
Another issue is the settler violence in the West Bank which the Israeli government has failed to rein in. Ministers discussed ongoing work on sanctions against extremist and violent settlers but it will take more time until a proposal is finalized, Borrell said. The issue is legally complicated and was supposed to have been discussed at the foreign affairs council meeting before Christmas.
The ministers also agreed to continue supporting to UNRWA (the UN agency for Palestine refugees). It was established in 1949 with a mandate to provide assistance and social services to registered Palestine refugees and their descendants. Hamas misused its infrastructure during the war and many of its schools and hospitals, where civilians have taken shelter, have been destroyed or stopped functioning.
M. Apelblat
The Brussels Time
