BRUSSELS, Belgium — A senior member of the European Union’s executive said the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip “looks very much” like genocide, becoming the first commissioner to level that accusation and publicly break with the body’s position on the conflict.
“If it is not genocide, it looks very much like the definition used to express its meaning,” Teresa Ribera, the European Commission’s second-highest ranking official, told Politico in an interview published on Thursday.
Israel has repeatedly rejected accusations of carrying out genocide or other war crimes in its war against the Hamas terror group in Gaza, and has pointed as evidence to efforts to avoid civilian casualties and facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid into the Strip.
Israel’s mission to the EU did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ribera is the European Commission’s executive vice president, second only in seniority to President Ursula von der Leyen. The Spanish socialist, whose portfolio includes climate and anti-trust issues, is not responsible for EU foreign policy.
“What we are seeing is a concrete population being targeted, killed and condemned to starve to death,” Ribera told Politico.
Her statements went further than the European Commission, which has accused Israel of violating human rights in Gaza, but stopped short of accusing it of genocide.
The Commission last week proposed curbing Israeli access to its flagship research funding program after calls from EU countries to increase pressure on Israel to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in the enclave.
In that proposal, the Commission said Israel had violated a human rights clause in an agreement that governs its relations with the EU.
“With its intervention in the Gaza Strip and the ensuing humanitarian catastrophe, including thousands of civilian deaths and rapidly rising numbers of spreading extreme malnutrition, specifically of children, Israel is violating human rights and humanitarian law,” it wrote.
Israel has fended off accusations of genocide, including a case brought by South Africa at the International Court of Justice in The Hague that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned as “outrageous.”
Jerusalem has emphasized its efforts to deliver humanitarian aid and vaccines to the civilian population in Gaza; evacuation warnings have been given ahead of major combat operations; and Hamas’s tactic of embedding itself within the civilian population and fighting from civilian areas, including homes, hospitals, and mosques.
Israel has also insisted there is “no starvation in Gaza,” and no intention to deprive people of food, but has acknowledged a “difficult” humanitarian situation, and has recently taken a number of measures — including daily, 10-hour pauses in fighting in parts of the Strip, new aid corridors, and airdrop operations — to mitigate it.
Also Thursday, the EU’s foreign policy bloc said there is an upward trend in the number of humanitarian aid trucks entering Gaza, but that it is still below what Israel agreed to in a deal with the EU last month.
The UN and other partners report that 463 trucks were offloaded at crossing points to Gaza between July 29 and August 4, according to a document seen by Reuters on Thursday.
The war in Gaza started when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages. Twenty hostages are still believed to be alive in captivity, while 28 others who have been confirmed dead, as well as two about whom Israel has expressed “grave concern,” are also still held in the Strip.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 60,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 20,000 combatants in battle as of January and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 onslaught.
Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 459. The toll includes two police officers and three Defense Ministry civilian contractors.