BRUSSELS—Israel is hoping the European Union can put pressure on the Palestinian Authority and Lebanon’s purse strings in an effort to keep Iran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah out of the war.
The EU, the largest foreign donor to the Palestinian people, has been facing internal criticism among member states after a top official within the bloc announced that the body would suspend aid—which is destined for the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank and humanitarian projects—only for the EU to publicly contradict that message, owing to the fact that member states control their own expenditures.
While Israel insists it’s not weighing in on EU politics, its envoy to Brussels is calling for consistent backing.
“We want to hear a clear voice and a continuous voice. The war is with Hamas, not with the Palestinian Authority, not with Lebanon. And they should stay out of this,” Haim Regev, the Israeli ambassador to the EU and NATO, said in an interview. “The EU has a key role in support for the Palestinians, for Lebanon. It can pass the message, a clear message: stay out of it.”
Regev, who repeatedly had to duck in and out of a Tuesday interview as he fielded calls from Israeli officials and EU diplomats, said that Israel was so far pleased with the support it had received from the European Union. Israel has called on the bloc to continue to reaffirm its right to self-defense from the Hamas attack.
And though the EU, with no ships, planes, or troops of its own, has not had a hard-power response, it has offered tough talk in diplomatic channels to try to stop the war from spreading. The United States, Italy, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom released a statement on Monday calling out Hamas for its “appalling” acts of terror. CNN reported on Wednesday that the United States and European allies, including France, had sent messages to Hezbollah through intermediaries to stay out of the conflict. Both the United States and the European Union have designated Hamas and Hezbollah as terror organizations, though the EU only designates the latter group’s military wing with that moniker.
But diplomats within the bloc have criticized the response from Brussels as muddled and riddled with messaging gaffes. The European Union appeared to go back on a snap declaration from a single commissioner that it would suspend aid on Monday, after the 27-nation bloc’s top diplomats met in Oman for an emergency meeting in the wake of Israel’s announcement of an impending siege of the Gaza Strip.
Oliver Varhelyi, a Hungarian diplomat and the EU’s chief for neighborhood and enlargement, posted on the social media platform X on Monday that the bloc had suspended 691 million euros in development aid to the Palestinian territories. But that’s a decision neither one commissioner nor the European Commission can take; it is up to the member states. Some—such as Germany, Denmark, Austria, and Sweden—have opted to suspend some of their aid while they review possible leaks to Hamas.
“Even though the EU wants to become a geopolitical player, conflicts like Israel-Palestine show that there are limits to what we can do,” said one senior EU diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk frankly about internal bloc politics.
Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign-affairs chief, also said the bloc was conducting its own review of contributions to Palestine to ensure that none of the funds had leaked to Hamas. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen also said on Wednesday that the Biden administration was considering new sanctions on Hamas, which has received military and financial assistance from Iran.
But even as Hamas’s invasion of Israel has seized Brussels on a busy week when 31 NATO defense ministers—and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky—have converged on the alliance’s headquarters for the latest pledging conference for the war-torn Eastern European country, the messaging kerfuffle is a drop in the bucket.
Some European lawmakers in the bloc want to see closer scrutiny of erstwhile partners and allies such as NATO member Turkey as well as Qatar, which hosts the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East but is also the base for some of Hamas’s political leadership.
“When I see the last messages coming from Hamas’s leadership, it was coming from Qatar, very openly, broadcasted live,” said Arnaud Danjean, an EU lawmaker from France. “On some dimensions, it’s problematic. Qatar is funding Gaza. I don’t think everything goes to humanitarian aid. Compared to the funding of the EU, the scale is huge.”
The entire European Union “all dream of peace talks,” Danjean said. “Who do you talk to? In the Palestinian Authority, there is no credibility. On the Israeli side, there is no willingness to engage.” But he said the ultimate end is a political solution.
The Israelis are committed to a siege and ground war in Gaza in an effort to take apart Hamas. And they aren’t relying on anyone else.
“Since we saw what we saw, the only way for us to do it is by destroying Hamas completely,” Regev said. “This lesson is important not only for Israel but for the region. Hezbollah is looking. [The Islamic State] is looking. Everybody is looking.”