{"id":3862,"date":"2026-03-04T22:37:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T22:37:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/3862\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T22:37:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T22:37:14","slug":"iran-war-shifts-eu-attention-from-extreme-israeli-actions-in-gaza-euobserver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/3862\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran war shifts EU attention from \u2018extreme\u2019 Israeli actions in Gaza \u2013 EUobserver"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Iran war risks distracting the EU from \u201cintensifying\u201d harm in Gaza and West Bank, on top of Europe\u2019s long-standing political divisions on Israel.<\/p>\n

The EU Parliament should \u2014 at the least \u2014 have a plenary debate on Gaza to hold Israel to account despite the Iran crisis, the leftwing, centre-left, Green, and liberal groups told press in Brussels on Wednesday (4 March).<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile the issue has fallen off the agenda, the actions of the Israeli government are becoming more extreme,\u201d said Irish leftwing MEP Lynn Boylan.<\/p>\n

Israel had used the Iran war as \u201ccover\u201d to block most aid to Gaza since the Iran attack began on 28 February, she said.<\/p>\n

Israel was guilty of \u201cmultiple breaches of international humanitarian law\u201d in Gaza, added Irish liberal MEP Barry Andrews.<\/p>\n

Their concerns were corroborated by the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) and London-based Amnesty groups.<\/p>\n

The Iran war meant \u201cthe risk of the EU losing focus on the situation in Gaza and the West Bank is very clear, very palpable,\u201d HRW\u2019s Claudio Francavilla told EUobserver.<\/p>\n

At the same time, \u201cIsrael\u2019s genocidal policy in Gaza has continued. They also continued their annexation policy in the West Bank\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

Amnesty\u2019s Eve Geddy said: \u201cLack of global condemnation of Israel\u2019s attacks on Iran has led to an intensification of its genocide and apartheid against Palestinians\u201d.<\/p>\n

Marina Miron, a defence expert from King\u2019s College London in the UK, also said: \u201cRight now, the immediate [EU] attention has, of course, shifted to Iran\u201d.<\/p>\n

And the shift could last a long time if the Iran war goes badly for Israel and the US, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t going to be a Maduro scenario, because Iran isn\u2019t Venezuela and Iran can do this [wage war] for a long time,\u201d said Miron, referring to the US overnight abduction of Venezuelan president<\/a> Nicol\u00e1s Maduro in January.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe beheading of the Iranian regime has not crippled the system,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor Iran, the best approach is the long war, to drag this out, make this as painful and costly for the US and Israel as it can,\u201d Miron added.<\/p>\n

\"\"Unsanitary living conditions spreading disease in Gaza, the UN said (Source: UNRWA<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Gaza deaths rising<\/p>\n

The situation in Gaza was already dire<\/a> on the eve of the Iran war, according to the UN\u2019s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).<\/p>\n

\u201cAirstrikes, shelling, and gunfire continued across the Gaza Strip\u201d killing seven people last week, OCHA said, on top of 611 killed<\/a> since a US-declared ceasefire in October 2025.<\/p>\n

Just 289 out of 20,000 Gaza patients who needed medical evacuation had gotten out via the EU-monitored Rafah crossing to Egypt before Israel shut it on Saturday.<\/p>\n

The UN also spoke of \u201cmalnourished children\u201d <\/a>and spread of \u201cectoparasitic skin infections (including scabies and head lice) and waterborne diseases\u201d in refugee camps, due to lack of water and soap.<\/p>\n

And in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Israeli soldiers and settlers had killed \u201c1,055 Palestinians \u2014 at least 230 of them children,\u201d since the Gaza war in 2023, the UN said, including the first fatality of settler violence this year, on 18 February.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe EU must demand that Israel reopens the Rafah crossing to allow the flow of food, medical supplies, and medical evacuations,\u201d said Amnesty\u2019s Geddy.<\/p>\n

The EU Parliament has no foreign policy powers, but when the EU Commission president proposed sanctions<\/a> against Israel last September it \u201chad a real impact on Israeli\u201d behaviour, said Andrews, the MEP.<\/p>\n

The sanctions have not been discussed in the EU Council since the 2025 Gaza ceasefire, diplomats said.<\/p>\n

Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Slovenia, and Spain were the most critical of Israel<\/a> before the Iran crisis, but Germany\u2019s centre-right government had resumed normal ties in the wake of the ceasefire.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t forget, the Germans are the second-largest provider of arms to an army [Israel\u2019s] whose government stands accused of genocide before the International Court of Justice [in The Hague],\u201d said HRW\u2019s Francavilla.<\/p>\n

\"\"EU coordinator for fighting antisemitism Katharina von Schnurbein (Source: EU Commission<\/a>).<\/p>\n

EU political divide<\/p>\n

And conservatives in the EU Parliament have blocked not just calls for a plenary debate on Gaza so far this year, but also her appeals to hold a minute\u2019s silence in sympathy with Palestinian victims, said Spanish centre-left MEP Ana Miranda Paz on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Miranda Paz referred to her Israel-critical bloc in the EU assembly, which represented 308 out of 720 seats, as \u201cthe progressive groups\u201d.<\/p>\n

For its part, Israel has accused almost all its EU critics of antisemitism.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, genuine antisemitic attacks and hate speech have spiked in Europe since the Gaza war began. <\/p>\n

And Middle East geopolitics aside, the human tragedies involved have \u201cdivided a lot of people\u201d also on a personal level inside EU institutions, Portuguese Green MEP Catarina Vieira told EUobserver.<\/p>\n

Some EU officials have baked cakes to sell for Gaza charities, for instance, but the EU Commission coordinator on combatting antisemitism, Katharina von Schnurbein, said this caused \u201cambient antisemitism\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did not say that bake sales as such were antisemitic. What I described was the challenge of this ambience,\u201d said von Schnurbein in a parliament hearing on 2 February, clarifying her leaked remarks to EU ambassadors in Israel last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you come into the office in the morning, and time and again you pass by a bake sale, and maybe you have someone who was killed in the Nova concert, it has an impact,\u201d von Schnurbein told the MEPs, referring to a music festival in Israel attacked by Palestinian fighters on 7 October 2023.<\/p>\n

Speaking at that same hearing on 2 February, the German centre-right MEP who chaired parliament\u2019s delegation to Israel, Hildegard Bentele, also blamed Arab immigrants for \u201cimported antisemitism\u201d in the EU and \u201cforeign influence, through [Qatari-based broadcaster] Al Jazeera\u201d for anti-Israel criticism that crossed the line into Jew-hatred.<\/p>\n

But for her part, Vieira, who came from Madeira, an \u201cultra-peripheral\u201d EU island in the Atlantic Ocean with almost no immigration and no historical Middle East ties, said people back home had voiced sympathy with Palestinians simply because their suffering had \u201ctouched a chord\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe vast majority of people have done this with respect and without blaming all Jewish people [for Israel\u2019s actions] and I hope that\u2019s always the way it goes,\u201d Vieira said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Iran war risks distracting the EU from \u201cintensifying\u201d harm in Gaza and West Bank, on top of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3863,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[2756,2762,2765,2759,37,2757,2760,2763,2758,2761,2764],"class_list":{"0":"post-3862","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-typedefinedterm","9":"tag-identifier4293","10":"tag-identifier4328","11":"tag-identifier4331","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-namegaza","14":"tag-nameiran","15":"tag-nameisrael","16":"tag-termcodegaza","17":"tag-termcodeiran","18":"tag-termcodeisrael"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116173304207456065","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}