{"id":93103,"date":"2025-07-26T03:49:14","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T03:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/93103\/"},"modified":"2025-07-26T03:49:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T03:49:14","slug":"merz-and-starmer-weigh-israel-action-after-macron-turns-up-heat-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/93103\/","title":{"rendered":"Merz and Starmer weigh Israel action after Macron turns up heat \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Israel launched its attack on Gaza in October 2023, after an attack by Hamas militants on Israeli territory killed over 1,000 people. Nearly 60,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, according to local health authorities.<\/p>\n<p><strong>German leverage<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The EU has struggled to make an impact since the conflict began \u2014\u00a0but if Germany decides to take bolder steps, it could unlock the bloc\u2019s strongest measures yet against Israel.<\/p>\n<p>Merz has already criticized Israeli actions in unusually strong terms for a German leader, but is now facing demands to\u00a0match his rhetoric with action, including from his junior coalition partner, the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). Two senior SPD lawmakers this week <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spdfraktion.de\/presse\/statements\/point-return-erreicht\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">called<\/a> on Merz\u2019s government to stop weapons exports to Israel and to join European efforts to suspend the EU\u2019s association agreement with the country.<\/p>\n<p>At a meeting in Brussels on Wednesday, EU ambassadors discussed the Gaza crisis and four countries \u2014 including Germany and Italy \u2014 reiterated their opposition to taking action via the association agreement. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>That meant there would be a \u201cblocking minority\u201d able to prevent any penalty measures being approved in a vote of EU countries\u2019 representatives in Brussels.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Around 10 countries, including Belgium, Ireland, Spain and Luxembourg spoke in favor of at least partial suspension of the agreement with Israel at Wednesday\u2019s meeting, according to an EU diplomat granted anonymity to speak candidly.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israel launched its attack on Gaza in October 2023, after an attack by Hamas militants on Israeli territory&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":93104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12648,111,372,113,114,115,9124,69,61557,8703,264,156,25821,117,119,99,373,2219,17723,121,1802,50,4851,126,6313,128,130,376,67,131,9826,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-93103","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-antisemitism","9":"tag-belgium","10":"tag-benjamin-netanyahu","11":"tag-conflict","12":"tag-cooperation","13":"tag-crisis","14":"tag-democratic-party","15":"tag-donald-trump","16":"tag-emily-thornberry","17":"tag-emmanuel-macron","18":"tag-exports","19":"tag-france","20":"tag-friedrich-merz","21":"tag-germany","22":"tag-ireland","23":"tag-israel","24":"tag-israel-hamas-war","25":"tag-italy","26":"tag-keir-starmer","27":"tag-luxembourg","28":"tag-military","29":"tag-news","30":"tag-palestine","31":"tag-sanctions","32":"tag-scotland","33":"tag-spain","34":"tag-trade","35":"tag-united-kingdom","36":"tag-united-states","37":"tag-war","38":"tag-weapons","39":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114917498082190176","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}