European nations are lining up behind a plan to recognize Palestine as a state at this week\u2019s UN General Assembly in New York. Top officials widely condemn Israel\u2019s actions in the Gaza Strip, and some have even begun to call the war \u201cgenocide.\u201d<\/p>\n
But big talk has yet to lead to big action.<\/p>\n
The European Union has proposed higher tariffs on Israeli goods, but it is not clear if that will happen. Other efforts to punish the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have stalled amid opposition, notably from Germany.<\/p>\n
Actions by individual countries have also fallen short of the rhetoric. Attempts to funnel aid into Gaza have been limited, even as starvation grips the territory. And nations have been accepting only a trickle of asylum-seekers from Gaza, with immigration often a domestic political flashpoint.<\/p>\n
Belgium has more Palestinian asylum applicants than anywhere else in Europe, likely because of its relatively permissive immigration practices and large existing Palestinian community. But even there, applying for asylum can be difficult. Many hopefuls have been rejected this year. While Belgium has been evacuating its citizens and the family members of its own residents and refugees from Gaza, the country closed its evacuation list, which then numbered about 500 people, in April.<\/p>\n
Bahjat Madi, 34, from the southern Gaza city of Rafah, has been in Belgium since 2022 and has been a resident since 2024. He is witnessing the fallout firsthand: Madi\u2019s father is still in Gaza, he said, struggling to get out.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to do anything for my father to be alive,\u201d said Madi, who is bringing a court case to get his father\u2019s visa application accepted remotely.<\/p>\n
His father is seeking a humanitarian visa but is required to apply at the consulate in Jerusalem, which is all but impossible for someone trapped in Gaza. If he can get the visa, he might eventually be added to an evacuation list. It is a long shot and could take years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to talk to myself at night and say, \u2018I do my best,\u2019\u201d Madi said. \u201cBut it\u2019s not enough.\u201d<\/p>\n
For policymakers, the question is whether Europe will turn words of condemnation and concern into more powerful action. European public opinion has turned against the Israeli conduct of the war, but long-standing alliances and fraught political histories have kept nations like Germany and Italy from supporting major action.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t seen any moment where such international momentum has built up in such a short time, so I think there\u2019s a real opening,\u201d said Kristina Kausch, deputy managing director for the German Marshall Fund South, a think tank focused on international relations. \u201cBut we will have to see what tangible commitments come, beyond the wording.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not only about Palestinians,\u201d she added. \u201cThis is about whether the West, and Europe, can uphold international law and uphold multilateralism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Luxembourg announced last week that it would join Belgium, Britain and a raft of other nations in recognizing a Palestinian state at the UN meeting in New York, a push spearheaded by President Emmanuel Macron of France that is meant to increase pressure on Israel. Last Tuesday, a United Nations commission investigating the war in Gaza said Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians, a topic poised to be prominent at the UN meeting. Israel calls such an accusation \u201cdistorted and false.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some individual European nations have taken more concrete actions. Prime Minister Pedro S\u00e1nchez of Spain recently pledged a permanent ban on the sale of weapons and ammunition to Israel, for instance, after canceling a contract worth 700 million euros (about $825 million) to buy rocket launchers. Belgium recently announced plans for a ban on imports from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.<\/p>\n
But such moves have had little impact on the course of the war. And other measures \u2013 like helping people to flee the region \u2013 are politically more difficult.<\/p>\n
After big flows of Syrian refugees in 2015 helped to fuel the rise of the far right in Germany and elsewhere, countries have been cautious about accepting displaced Palestinians in large numbers. That has left many from Gaza either trapped in place or stuck in limbo in neighboring countries like Egypt.<\/p>\n
Nations have argued that there are limits to what any one country can do and have urged the European Union, with its economic and diplomatic might, to respond. Taken together, the bloc is Israel\u2019s biggest trading partner, and in 2024, accounted for 32% of Israel\u2019s total trade in goods.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is really an emergency for Europe to take action,\u201d Maxime Pr\u00e9vot, the Belgian foreign minister, said in an interview this month. \u201cMany, in public opinion, do not understand why Europe is so timid.\u201d<\/p>\n
But bloc-wide efforts have struggled to get off the ground.<\/p>\n
When the European Union\u2019s diplomatic branch conducted a review this year of a treaty that governs the bloc\u2019s relations with Israel, it found indications that Israel had breached its human rights obligations under the pact.<\/p>\n
After that conclusion, the European Commission, the bloc\u2019s executive arm, proposed that Europe\u2019s political leaders could ban Israel from participating in a research-funding program called Horizon Europe. But even that step struggled to garner enough support among member states.<\/p>\n
More than 200 former bloc ambassadors and diplomatic staff members wrote to European Union leaders last month expressing their \u201cprofound disappointment\u201d in the failure to pressure Israel more effectively.<\/p>\n
Now, the commission is making its biggest push yet, attempting to suspend part of the bloc\u2019s trade agreement with Israel. Doing so would remove preferential treatment from billions of euros of trade.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is happening in Gaza has shaken the conscience of the world,\u201d Ursula von der Leyen, president of the commission, said in a recent speech.<\/p>\n
The proposal signals a condemnation of what Israel is doing. Because passing it would require a large majority \u2013 but not unanimity \u2013 analysts said it was possible that it could become policy.<\/p>\n
But that remains far from guaranteed.<\/p>\n
Germany in particular, with its Holocaust history, has hesitated to criticize Israel too overtly. Italy, too, has been reluctant.<\/p>\n
Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany warned last week that criticism of Israel was \u201cincreasingly a pretext under which the poison of antisemitism is spread.\u201d Merz suggested Thursday that his government would decide by the start of next month whether to support the European Union\u2019s attempts to punish Israel.<\/p>\n
Kaja Kallas, the bloc\u2019s top diplomat, suggested Wednesday that the challenge in finding agreement might persist.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe political lines are very much in the place where they have been so far,\u201d Kallas said.<\/p>\n