For his last meeting as head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell expressed his concern about the situation in the Middle East, urging the EU to suspend dialogue with Israel.
“There are no more words. I have exhausted all the words to explain what is happening in the Middle East”: the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell bluntly expressed his frustration this Monday 18 November in Brussels.
“There are approximately 44,000 dead in Gaza and 70% of those killed are women and children,” the Spanish official said before chairing what should be his last meeting of EU foreign ministers European.
“When we look at their age, they are most often children under the age of nine,” he lamented.
Josep Borrell, 77, is due to leave office next month. For this last meeting under his presidency, he proposed to the 27 to suspend the political dialogue, provided for by the association agreement between the European Union and Israel. But most EU countries, including Germany, the Netherlands and France, are not in favor of it.
“History is watching us”
“The EU has blood on its hands” in the Gaza Strip, declared the NGO Oxfam in a press release published on Monday. “The discussions taking place today behind closed doors have an impact on real people, confronted with the unimaginable. Yet Europe’s response is often lethargic,” said Agnès Bertrand-Sanz, humanitarian expert at Oxfam, for whom the EU and its Member States must “redouble their efforts to demand a ceasefire, suspend the EU-Israel association agreement”, “guarantee that humanitarian aid is not blocked or destroyed” and “stop arms sales to Israel.”
“History is watching us, and Europe must choose: does it want to be complicit in these violations of international humanitarian law and this campaign of ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza? Does it want to have blood on its hands”, asks Agnès Bertrand-Sanz again.
On Ukraine, Josep Borrell also expressed his frustration after 1,000 days of war since the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022. “Too often we have not been united. Too often the discussions have lasted too long” , he lamented. “My last request to my colleagues will be to be more united, to make decisions more quickly,” further underlined the head of European diplomacy.
“You cannot claim to be a geopolitical power if you take days, weeks, months to conclude agreements and act,” explained Josep Borrell, who is to be replaced in December by former Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas.
