LISBON, Portugal — European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Wednesday that the international community had to “impose” a solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
“What we have learned over the last 30 years, and what we are learning now with the tragedy experienced in Gaza, is that the solution must be imposed from outside,” Borrell told diplomats in Portugal.
“Peace will only be achieved in a lasting manner if the international community gets involved intensely to achieve it and imposes a solution,” he said, pointing to the United States, Europe and Arab countries.
Borrell warned that the airstrike in Beirut on Tuesday that killed senior Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri was “an additional factor that can cause an escalation of the conflict.”
The EU’s top diplomat said he had planned to travel to Lebanon on Thursday but that the trip might be canceled due to security concerns.
Borrell also said he would present to the EU member states a proposal to create a mission to contribute to security in the Red Sea amid ongoing attacks on maritime vessels by the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen. The proposal, set to be presented on Thursday, would require unanimity among member states for it to go ahead, he said.
Although Israel did not claim responsibility for the blast in the Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh, it is widely assumed to be behind the killing of Arouri, 57, the political number two of Hamas and one of the founders of the Palestinian terrorist organization’s military wing.
Following the deadly October 7 onslaught in southern Israel, in which thousands of Hamas-led terrorists burst into the country from the land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and seizing around 240 hostages, Israel vowed to eliminate the ruling Gaza terror group, launching an aerial campaign and subsequent ground operation.
The Hamas-run health ministry in the Gaza Strip has claimed that more than 22,000 people have been killed since October 7, most of them women and children. These numbers cannot be independently verified, however, and do not differentiate between civilians and combatants, of whom Israel believes some 8,500 have been killed. They are also believed to include civilians killed by hundreds of misfired Palestinian rockets that landed in Gaza.
The EU expressed support for Israel after October 7, with Borrell visiting Israel and the communities that were attacked by Hamas. During the visit, he said that Israel has a right to defend itself, but warned against acting out of “rage.”
In December, Borrell called the situation in Gaza “catastrophic” and “apocalyptic,” claiming that the destruction in the Strip during the war was proportionally greater than that of Germany as a result of World War II.