October 11, 2023 - 5:30pm

The war between Israel and Hamas has exacerbated long-running divisions between EU member states. Despite an effort to appear united in condemnation of the shock attack and atrocities committed, the bloc’s response has been a diplomatic shambles.   A statement from European Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi — nominated for his post by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, one of Europe’s most pro-Israel leaders — that aid for Palestine would be suspended in light of the attack was followed by a backlash from countries with more sympathy towards Palestine. The Commission proceeded to tie itself in knots over the issue, giving the impression that in Brussels the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing.  Clarification only came on Tuesday evening when the bloc’s foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell confirmed that payments to Palestine would not be stopped – apparently contradicting an earlier statement from the Commission suggesting that no payments were due anyway — and claimed that now “we have to support more, not less”. Borrell justified the continued flow of aid to Palestine by arguing that “the suspension of payments — punishing all of the Palestinian people — would have damaged the EU’s interests in the region and would have only further emboldened terrorists.” His claim was supported by European Council President Charles Michel, who said cutting off aid to Palestine “could be exploited by Hamas and exacerbate tensions and hatred”.   The EU feels caught between a rock and a hard place. Continuing to supply aid runs the risk of indirectly funding terrorism — but cutting it off, it’s feared, could stoke resentment and lead to even greater levels of extremism. The response from Brussels is a limp resolve to stick with the status quo while launching an “urgent review” on whether funding may support terrorist groups.  Similar indecisiveness also affected attempts to put together a joint EU statement in response to the Hamas attack. Countries including Ireland, Luxembourg and Denmark threatened to disrupt the bloc's united front by calling for a reference to “de-escalation” — precisely the kind of equivocal rhetoric which previously earned countries such as Hungary strong international opprobrium over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  Staunchly pro-Israel nations in Europe are all too familiar with frustration on this topic. Budapest has in the past refused to sign EU declarations on Israel-Palestine which it deemed wishy-washy and equivocal, a characteristic which Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó previously condemned as a “general problem with European statements on Israel”.   Yet equivocation is hard to avoid in Brussels when EU politicians are so heavily influenced by the views of the conflict prevalent in their home nations. Positions taken by Commission figures during the shambolic back-and-forth over aid for Palestine, for example, correlate with the dominant political attitudes towards the conflict in commissioners’ home countries. After confirming that aid would continue to flow to Palestine, Borrell on Tuesday continued the EU's tradition of equivocation by saying Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip in response to the Hamas attack violates international law.  As the EU’s diplomatic shambles has shown, the Israel-Palestine conflict is an issue which casts aspirations for ever-closer union on foreign and security policy in a painfully harsh light. The bloc is ideally placed to wield influence in the region, as Israel’s largest trading partner and the biggest supplier of aid to Palestine — but it remains hamstrung by uncertainty and internal division.

William Nattrass is a British journalist based in Prague and news editor of Expats.cz