Where stands Europe as renewed conflict hits the Middle East?

At a time when many observant Jewish people around the world had not yet heard the news because their phones were turned off for the Sabbath, calls began pinging between the capitals of the 27 European Union countries on Saturday morning to co-ordinate a response.

Horrific details emerged of the slaughter of families in their homes and young people at a music festival, including Kim Damti, a 22-year-old Irish-Israeli woman who was confirmed dead on Wednesday. Political leaders were shocked – and some were hardened. It was clear it could have major implications for Europe: fresh conflict in the neighbourhood, a potential humanitarian and refugee crisis, and a sudden diversion of international attention away from war the EU considers “existential”: Ukraine.

To anyone familiar with the conflict it was a given that Israel would respond to the attack with massive air strikes on Gaza. By the time people were having their breakfast in Ireland on Saturday the bombing had already begun.

Israeli air strikes flattened the Al-Sousi Mosque and a high-rise residential building in densely-populated Gaza city on early Saturday, video suggests. Médecins Sans Frontières reported that a hit on a hospital had killed an ambulance driver and a nurse. Large numbers of wounded people began arriving at hospitals. Unable to leave due to the narrow strip’s sealed borders, frightened residents began emptying out supermarkets to stock up on food.

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“We are at war,” Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu declared. He announced a mass call-up of army reservists “to fight back on a scale and intensity that the enemy has so far not experienced”. It was an indication of a potential ground war.

Fearing what was to come, the Irish Government, together with Denmark and Luxembourg, made a diplomatic push for an EU’s statement to include a call to avoid escalation. The effort failed, partly due to the opposition of countries including Austria, according to diplomatic sources.

In the aftermath, either due to a distorted rumour or a deliberate attempt to discredit those seen as “soft on Palestine”, Ireland, Luxembourg, and Denmark were named in an incorrect Israeli media report as having refused to describe Hamas as a terror group. They all publicly denied it – but not before the damaging claim went viral.

The joint EU statement was published at 4pm Irish time, just under seven hours since the first Hamas rockets had streaked across the sky, heralding the start of the attack. “The EU stands in solidarity with Israel, which has the right to defend itself in line with international law, in the face of such violent and indiscriminate attacks,” it read.

It condemned the Hamas attack in “the strongest possible terms”, saying it would “only further increase tensions on the ground and seriously undermine Palestinian people’s aspirations for peace”.

The statement was issued on behalf of the member states by the EU’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell.

During the course of the morning the veteran Spanish socialist had held phone calls with regional powers including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi and the Arab League, and in the wake of those talks appealed for the urgent cessation of hostilities, de-escalation and respect for international law.

He spoke to the Palestinian prime minister, stressing the need for violence to cease immediately, and to Israel’s foreign minister Eli Cohen, telling him that the EU recognised Israel had the right to defend itself “in line with international law”.

Across the road from Mr Borrell’s office, however, a different message was being sent. In a series of public messages the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, declared that Israel had the right to self-defence – with no qualification.

Just after midnight she published a photo of commission headquarters the Berlaymont lit up with the Israeli flag with the words: “Israel has the right to defend itself – today and in the days to come.” In another message she declared the EU would stand with Israel “today and in the next weeks”.

It conveyed not just sympathy for the Hamas attack but apparent support on behalf of the EU for the Israeli retaliation that was to come.

As Israel formally declared war on Sunday, Dr von der Leyen posted a photograph of the Israeli flag hoisted at the Berlaymont. These decisions caused disquiet among some EU member states, as well as public concern in some quarters.

Fianna Fáil MEP Barry Andrews, while vehemently condemning “the attacks and terrorism perpetrated by Hamas”, pointed out that under EU treaties the commission does not have the power to set foreign policy. The commission can only enact what the member states – the European Council – decide.

“The official EU stance on this conflict is in support of a negotiated two-state solution and I don’t believe that displaying one side’s flag moves us closer to this goal,” he said in a statement. “It is not appropriate for the European Commission to display the Israeli flag because this is neither the common position of EU member states, nor does the commission have the relevant competences. This is undoubtedly an overreach.”

The following day the Left Independent MEPs Mick Wallace and Clare Daly circulated a letter to Dr von der Leyen accusing her of exceeding her powers and demanding an “urgent investigation” into who had authorised the projection of the flag.

Across the road the European Council had taken a different decision: its building was illuminated in simple white.

A commission spokesman said it was usual practice to display a national flag in solidarity after a terrorist attack, as it did after the Paris attacks in 2015 and the Brussels bombings in 2016. Since then Ukraine has set the precedent of overt demonstrations of support of one side of a war.

But whereas supporting Ukraine was unanimously backed by member states, the Israeli-Palestine conflict profoundly divides them. Some had concerns too, based on past experience, that Israel could break international law. “We stand by Israel, we condemn the terrorist attacks, it was terrible,” one official said. “But we don’t know what they are going to do in Gaza. Can we give them carte blanche to do whatever they want?”

On Monday the firmly pro-Israel Hungarian commissioner Oliver Varhelyi appeared to seize his moment. In the wake of the Hamas attack, countries including Germany and Austria suspended Palestinian aid programmes. There was pressure on the commission – the biggest single funder of Palestinian aid – to follow suit.

Foreign ministers were due to meet for an emergency session to discuss the issue on Tuesday. A full day earlier Mr Varhelyi pre-empted their decision with a declaration on his official X account. “All payments immediately suspended,” it read.

The declaration reverberated around the world. The secretary general of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, called the president of the European Council Charles Michel to express his alarm. Ireland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Spain expressed their concern. “Our understanding is that there is no legal basis for a unilateral decision of this kind by an individual commissioner and we do not support a suspension of aid,” a spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs said.

Initially the commission’s press service confirmed Mr Varhelyi’s post to journalists as accurate. The commission’s heads of department then gathered for talks, which revealed deep divisions on the issue.

Almost six hours later the commission finally produced an official statement. It partially retracted Mr Varhelyi’s claim. It announced there would be a review of all Palestinian funding to ensure none of it “indirectly enables any terrorist organisation to carry out attacks against Israel”. No payments would be suspended, it continued, because none were planned. Humanitarian aid was exempt.

A spokesman later said that Mr Varhelyi had acted without consulting other commissioners, and that his post “was not an official announcement”.

Decisions in the commission are supposed to be made collectively by the 27 commissioners, each representing one member state.

When EU foreign ministers did finally meet on Tuesday, the “overwhelming majority” agreed that “payments should not be interrupted”, Mr Borrell told media.

He stressed a distinction between Hamas, the group in power in Gaza, and their more moderate rivals who rule the West Bank and control the Palestinian Authority, which receives funding from the EU. He told journalists that stopping support to the Palestinian Authority would be a “terrible mistake”.

“It will be the best present that we could give to Hamas, and it will jeopardise our interest and our partnership with the Arab world,” he said.

He also articulated the EU’s first outright criticism of Israel, describing the decision to cut food, water, and electricity to Gaza as “against international law”.

Nevertheless, when EU commissioners met for their weekly meeting on Wednesday, Mr Varhelyi stuck to his guns, according to two sources briefed on the matter. Also attending the meeting was the Israeli ambassador to the EU Haim Regev, at Dr von der Leyen’s invitation. Though the commission has denied that Mr Varhelyi consulted his boss before making the announcement, he could be forgiven for thinking he had her implicit backing.

The issue of aid has long been contentious between Israel and the EU. In 2021 Israeli forces repeatedly bulldozed EU-funded tents and solar panels in an occupied Palestinian part of the West Bank, insisting that the area was a military firing range and that the structures had no permits. Humanitarian workers described it as an attempted land seizure of a place where Palestinian families live.

The EU issued a statement condemning the demolitions as “illegal under international law”. A week later Israeli forces again moved in and destroyed EU-funded shelters – this time in front of a visiting delegation of European diplomats.

Then came a long delay in payment of the 2021 tranche of EU aid due to the Palestinian Authority at a time when it was struggling to cope with the economic impact of the pandemic and surging food prices. Mr Varhelyi, who oversees the relevant department as commissioner for neighbourhood and enlargement, obstructed the payment despite not having the backing of EU member states. It followed a controversy over Palestinian textbooks that were alleged to contain anti-Semitic content. Mr Varhelyi proposed making the funding conditional on the Palestinian Authority undertaking an education reform.

EU foreign ministers resorted to publicly clamouring for the commission to release the aid. Irish diplomats organised 15 member states to sign a joint letter that was circulated in April 2022. It accused the commission of having no mandate to withhold the aid, and said the proposal to force educational reform “does not enjoy broad support”. It was signed by Ireland, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden.

Ireland is viewed as one of the most, if not the most, supportive to Palestinians of all EU member states. Others historically viewed as particularly supportive include Slovenia and Cyprus. Israel has its strongest allies further to the east, particularly Hungary and the Czech Republic.

When it comes to NGOs the objections of the Israeli government are wide-ranging.

In 2018 it objected to the awarding of €520,000 in EU funding to Trócaire on the basis that the charity supported the Occupied Territories Bill – the stalled law that would ban Irish trade with illegal Israeli settlements. The Israeli government considers economic sanction movements to be “delegitimising” to the state of Israel, and its report on the NGOs described the boycott, sanctions, divestment (BDS) movement as “a complementary track to terrorism”.

In 2021 it listed two Palestinian NGOs that had been funded by Irish Aid as terror groups. These included the West Bank rights group Al-Haq and the Palestinian prisoners assistance group Addameer, which had regularly received funding of about €80,000 each annually from Irish Aid. The move by Israel, which was based on alleged links between past or former employees and terrorist groups, was met with international outcry. Al-Haq described it as an attempt to “silence and criminalise the Palestinian civil society organisations” and prevent their accountability work for human rights violations.

A joint statement by Ireland, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden stated that “no substantial information was received from Israel that would justify reviewing our policy” towards the NGOs.

EU aid is distributed in a mix of direct member state donations and joint funding. It is paid to United Nations agencies and NGOs, which sometimes distribute it on further or is distributed between bodies that jointly undertake projects.

The EU also funds the Palestinian Authority, paying the salaries and pensions of civil servants and social allowances for vulnerable families. The latest yearly payment was announced earlier this year to be €199.2 million, including funding for clean drinking water, legal aid, and medical treatment.

There is one aspect of Palestinian Authority payments that EU member states concede is problematic. For many years the Palestinian Authority has been paying stipends to the families of prisoners in Israeli jails – a reviled policy in Israel where it is nicknamed “pay to slay”. On a 2021 visit to Israel then foreign minister Simon Coveney said he had advised the Palestinian Authority to stop doing it. “Certainly there shouldn’t be a financial reward for crimes,” he told local media.

In some ways Dr von der Leyen’s reaction to the crisis is in keeping with her record. She drew criticism from the Palestinian Authority earlier this year for saying “you have literally made the desert bloom” in a tribute message to Israel on the anniversary of its founding – a phrase hated by Palestinians for implying the land was uninhabited or uncultivated before.

Her term in office has established new commission powers and a “presidential” public image through joint EU borrowing, joint vaccine procurement and prominent support for Ukraine. She has said the EU should act quickly in response to geopolitical developments, and that the unanimous support of EU member states should therefore not to be required for foreign policy decisions.

At times this approach has caused conflict with member states, such as with a migration pact signed with Tunisia this summer offering funding in exchange for it hardening its borders that was not pre-approved by member states. Member states expressed “incomprehension” that the commission had acted unilaterally without seeking their approval, Mr Borrell wrote in a rare written rebuke.

By now appearing to declare unqualified support for Israel on behalf of the EU, the commission chief has strayed into deeply divisive ground. In the eyes of critics it risks damaging the EU’s complex balance of relationships with the Arab world and potentially undermining its credibility as an upholder of international law.

As for the consequences for Dr von der Leyen personally, several officials remarked that it has alienated a number of member states in a crucial period before it will be up to them to decide whether to renominate her for a second term in 2024.