How long can EU’s ‘Zionist veto’ block Israel’s accountability?
Pro-Palestinian protesters head towards the port on 5 September 2025 in Livorno, Italy
Tamam Abusalama writes in The New Arab on 27 April 2026:
The Ad Hoc Liaison Committee, co-sponsored by the United States and tasked with coordinating aid to Palestinians, met last week [20 April] with representatives of the Palestinian Authority and the so-called Board of Peace. Yet behind this carefully staged humanitarian façade lies a deeper political reality, the European Commission would rather obscure ahead of the Foreign Affairs Council: the EU’s own responsibility.
One day later, in Luxembourg, EU foreign ministers returned to a familiar agenda item: the Middle East. This time, however, the discussion carried unusual weight. Across Europe, public attention has sharpened on a question long avoided by much of the political elite: whether the EU–Israel Association Agreement should be suspended. For decades, that agreement has been treated as untouchable. But calls to suspend it are not new. They go back 24 years.
In April 2022, in response to large-scale Israeli military operations in the West Bank, the European Parliament adopted a resolution urging precisely that. The European Commission, then as now, chose not to act.
Around the same time, the UN Commission on Human Rights also passed a resolution condemning Israel for the mass killing of Palestinians. The main opponents included the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the Czech Republic, countries that remain among Israel’s key military and political supporters.