Editorial: As Gaza starves, the EU is on holiday

The spectre of starvation stalks Gaza, a territory only 15% bigger than the Maltese islands crammed with over two million Palestinians. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), supported and set up by Israel and the US to supply food to Gaza, has only fulfilled the worst fears of the UN and aid agencies.

The GHF has forced Palestinians, regardless of disability, age or health, to walk several miles to four militarised distribution points in an infernal hell-scape of rubble in scorching summer heat. They are open for as little as 10 minutes a day, which explains the fatal stampedes we have seen. Palestinians know how to queue for food.

As predicted, hundreds of civilians have been killed simply queueing or travelling to the GHF food distribution points. If anything could be more horrifying than the increasing numbers of people, including children, suffering from chronic malnutrition and dying of starvation, it is to witness in real time daily an entire population of men, women and children robbed of all human dignity as they scramble for food like ants in the dust.

Yes, let us remember that all this was triggered by the horrific Hamas massacres of October 7. Yes, let us remember all the history that led to this. But not now. In the face of mass starvation, the only relevant fact is that food is not reaching Gaza.

The question we should be asking right now concerns the EU. Where is the biggest supplier of foreign aid to the Palestinians, and the most important trading partner for Israel, through the EU-Israel Association Agreement?

The answer is a smokescreen behind which 27 member states hide.

Unanimous agreement among them is mandated for any foreign policy intervention, and that is what striving to avoid mass starvation in Gaza falls under: more precisely, ‘Article 31 of the Treaty of the EU, Decision Making in the Common Foreign and Security Policy’.

Gaza is at a tipping point towards mass starvation. EU leaders should not even think of being on holiday.

As it has proven impossible to achieve, everybody has gone off on holiday with a clean conscience, and the streets of the European Quarter in Brussels echo in the silence, with everybody at the beach or in the mountains until the end of August. Starving Palestinians will have to wait until EU leaders revisit Israeli efforts in Gaza in September.

The reasons why the EU fails to organise itself to protect the Palestinians are many and relevant. Israel is a militarised, western ally in the Middle East where the EU has vital interests, from the protection of trade routes to the real risks posed by Iran and Islamist terror groups (whose anti-western ideology is not primarily spurred by the plight of the Palestinians). Germany, which killed six million Jews in the Holocaust, stands by Israel regardless of the horrors in Gaza. Both the hard and moderate political right in the EU is defined by ideological support for Israel. Countries like Belgium, Ireland, Slovenia and Spain have been extremely critical of Israel. Many choose to sit on the fence.

When will it be time for the EU to apply its immense powers to achieve one objective: feed the Palestinians?

And if the EU is a smokescreen for the individual responsibility of every elected leader in the EU, including our very own European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, and our hapless prime minister, then it is up to us, the citizens of the 27 member states, to look beyond politics, our interpretations of history, prejudice, from antisemitism to Islamophobia, to apply pressure on our elected leaders.

Gaza is at a tipping point towards mass starvation. With as little as two consecutive days of no food one’s body is already weak. EU leaders should not even think of being on holiday.