Израйлын эсрэг олон нийтийн шүүмжлэл өсөж байгаа ч Европын холбоо шийдвэртэй алхам хийж чадахгүй байна

When the British government announced sweeping sanctions on trade with illegal Israeli settlements and condemned “ethnic cleansing” in the West Bank by state-backed “settler terrorists”, some EU diplomats hoped this dramatic shift in UK government policy towards Israel would have a galvanising effect on the rest of Europe. So far, it has not.

Although France and Canada joined the UK in pledging to ban goods from illegal settlements and impose sanctions on “those who facilitate them or profit from them”, there has not yet been a wider ripple effect.

A meeting of EU foreign affairs ministers on Monday is likely to showcase the bloc’s stasis in policy towards Israel – a stalemate that is at odds with rising public criticism in Europe of Israel’s government.

A survey of 10 European countries, including Spain, France and Sweden, found large majorities of people had a negative opinion of Israel. Views had become more negative compared with the previous year, according to the Pew Research Center, mostly after the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran, which unleashed a new crisis in the Middle East and a global economic shock. In Poland, negative views jumped eight points to 70% of respondents, in Italy they increased by nine points to 75% and in Germany they also rose by nine points to 73%.

Israel is facing ever deeper isolation in the theatre of public opinion. Five countries chose to boycott the Eurovision song contest this year over Israel’s participation, after organisers declined to exclude it over its conduct in the Gaza war and rising violence in the West Bank. Organisers have now decided that broadcasters will no longer be eligible to host the song contest if their state is involved in an armed conflict or sensitive geopolitical situation.

More than 74,000 people, including at least 21,200 children, have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its war in retaliation for the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023, in which the terrorist group killed 1,209 people – including 36 children – and took 251 hostages, inflicting a nationwide trauma.

Gaza remains a humanitarian catastrophe, with people facing acute shortages of water, nutritious food and medical equipment and medicines, while contending with disease, unemployment, economic collapse and the threat of death or injury. Israel’s airstrikes continue: the death toll includes 1,400 Palestinians killed since a ceasefire was declared a year ago.

The EU talks on the Middle East will focus on the conflicts in Iran and Yemen, but ministers will also discuss the situation in Gaza and the West Bank in the context of elections in Israel on 27 October and the first legislative elections in Palestine in 20 years, which are expected by late November.

The discussion is expected to expose familiar fault lines in the 27-member EU. One group of countries are vocal supporters of the Palestinian cause: Spain and Ireland were the first to call for a review of whether Israel’s conduct in the Gaza war was in breach of the human rights requirements of its association agreement with the EU, which covers the €68bn (£58bn) trade relationship, cooperation in research, environment and energy.

A second group consistently opposes targeting Israel’s government: Germany and Austria are close allies for historical reasons, while Czechia and Italy are ideologically aligned with Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration.

Among a third, larger group of countries in the middle are several, such as France and the Netherlands, that are increasingly critical of the Netanyahu government’s conduct in Gaza and its plans to build the vast E1 settlement, which threatens to critically damage the two-state solution.

Martin Konečný, the director of the Brussels-based European Middle East Project, thinks the EU has a diplomatic role to play as Israel advances with the controversial E1 plan. However, he does not see any sign of action. “The EU is basically staying in its usual self-imposed irrelevance,” he said.

This is not an isolated view. More than 500 former senior EU officials and diplomats issued a statement this week condemning the bloc’s failure to take action over Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank.

The signatories, which include former prime ministers of France, Italy and Sweden, as well as Josep Borrell, the EU’s former chief diplomat, singled out Germany and Italy for the first time in stark, uncompromising language.

“Germany and Italy continue to systematically block the adoption of any EU measures, thus becoming de facto complicit in undermining both EU values and the two-state solution,” wrote the group, which includes a few dozen senior figures from those two countries.

Given their size, Germany and Italy have been crucial in preventing the EU from forging a weighted majority to impose trade sanctions and ban commerce with illegal settlements.

Michael Doyle, a former EU ambassador who co-organised the statement, told the Guardian the EU was not meeting the obligations of its treaties or international law.

“Unfortunately our often-proclaimed EU values are set aside when it comes to the EU’s collective response to the dire plight of Palestinians,” he said. The widespread disquiet explained “why we get so many signatures from people who don’t normally sign such calls for action”.

The statement was motivated by the absence of proposals from the European Commission, the guardian of EU law that initiates legislation for the 27-member bloc. The commission has declined to table proposals to ban trade with illegal settlements.

The refusal to act has exasperated numerous lawyers and trade experts, who argue the ban is necessary for the EU to comply with a landmark advisory ruling from the international court of justice in 2024 on the illegality of the settlements. It told other countries to “take steps to prevent trade or investment relations that assists in the maintenance of the illegal situation created by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory”.

Ursula von der Leyen, the commission’s president and a German Christian Democrat who is not afraid to take political risks, has argued the EU cannot act when member states disagree. In her annual state of the union speech last month, she lamented: “When Europe is divided, it cannot change the course of events.” A year earlier she presented proposals to suspend preferential trade with Israel but never found sufficient support from member states.

Advocates of the EU taking a stronger approach are not convinced she cannot act. Konečný said: “It is not guaranteed that the qualified majority would be reached. But once the commission tables the proposal [on banning trade with settlements], that changes the dynamic.”

The blocking European governments may be lagging behind public opinion. Large majorities in Italy (88%) and Germany (83%) say they do not have confidence in Netanyahu “to do the right thing regarding world affairs”, according to the Pew Research Center’s study.

Meanwhile, the question of Israel-Palestine continues to roil the left. This week the Green party of England and Wales adopted a motion equating Zionism with racism, drawing widespread criticism.

The motion from a small political party in the UK was strongly condemned by the head of the Jewish Greens in England and Wales (“a very bad motion”) and the European Greens, which stressed the importance of being “absolutely unambiguous” in the fight against antisemitism.

Peace campaigners think it makes their job harder. The motion “hands ammunition to those who want to paint pro-Palestinian activism as illegitimate”, wrote Yachad, an organisation that seeks to build support among British Jews for a political resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.