Benjamin Netanyahu has brushed aside European concerns over Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. A tougher approach from Brussels is overdue<\/p>\n
In recent months, European expressions of concern over the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s government have regularly hardened into outright condemnation. Last September, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, expressed<\/a> horror and outrage at aid restrictions that she said created a \u201cman-made famine\u201d in Gaza. Brussels has inveighed<\/a> against settler violence and land grabs in the West Bank, which undermine the possibility of a viable Palestinian state. Responding to the bombing of Lebanon following the US-Israeli ceasefire with Iran, the EU\u2019s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said<\/a>: \u201cIsrael\u2019s right to self-defence does not justify this destruction.\u201d<\/p>\n The angry words and exhortations have achieved nothing. Mr Netanyahu and his ministers have generally treated<\/a> European critics with barely concealed contempt, presumably reassured by the fact that their chief allies in the White House tend to behave in exactly the same fashion. The EU is Israel\u2019s biggest trading partner, and the academic benefits it confers through Israeli participation in the Horizon research programme<\/a> are considerable. But internal disunity, and an overoptimistic faith in the power of persuasion, have led to a reluctance by the bloc to use those relationships as leverage.<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Benjamin Netanyahu has brushed aside European concerns over Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. A tougher approach from Brussels is overdue In recent months, European expressions of concern over the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s government have regularly hardened into outright condemnation. Last September, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, expressed horror and outrage … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}