A senior Israeli diplomat has urged Europe to treat his country with “respect” and stop “meddling” in its politics if it wants to maintain good relations with Israel and play a role in shaping the Middle East peace process.
“The European Union should realise that Israel is a player and a partner, and should be treated fairly,” ambassador Yossi Amrani, political director at Israel’s foreign ministry, told Euractiv in an interview in Brussels. He chastised European politicians who, he said, believed they can “pressure” Israel with sanctions and other tactics.
“The EU is not the United States of America, and I’m not sure the United States, in dealing with Israel, is using the term ‘pressure,’” he said. “If you respect a partner, you discuss and negotiate with a partner. You don’t pressure, you don’t threaten.”
Tensions between Israel and several European countries, including France, Spain, and Belgium, boiled over in recent months amid the war in Gaza. Many politicians from those countries – including European Commissioners Teresa Ribera of Spain and Hadja Lahbib of Belgium – have publicly suggested that Israel committed genocide in Gaza in its war against Hamas, an accusation the country vehemently rejects.
Amrani, the third-ranking official in Israel’s foreign office and its highest-ranking career diplomat, said European leaders making such claims were ignoring the realities on the ground to appeal to anti-Israeli sentiment among their domestic audiences.
While Israel continues to have strong relations with many EU countries, he said, relations with the bloc has a whole remain strained – in part because of what Israel considers European interference in its internal affairs.
“Europe is meddling … through NGOs, through finance, through certain initiatives,” Amrani said, pointing to French President Emmanuel Macron, who angered Israel recently by recognising a Palestinian state and organising conferences to promote a two-state solution.
Before US President Donald Trump brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas earlier this month, the EU had threatened to impose sanctions on Israel over what many European leaders described as a disproportionate campaign in Gaza.
Israel launched its offensive in response to the deadly Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023. Since then, tens of thousands of Gazans have been killed amid Israel’s war against Hamas, with bombings in the densely populated territory reducing large parts of it to rubble.
Europe’s differences with Israel over the war have also left the EU sidelined in the recent US-led peace talks. Neither the EU nor any of its member states played a role in the negotiations, Amrani said. That exclusion was symbolically clear during Trump’s mid-October visit to Egypt for his Gaza peace summit.
“Let’s remember the picture for Sharm El Sheikh – it speaks volumes on who runs the show and who is backstage,” Amrani said, referring to how European leaders were relegated to the fringes of the summit’s “family photo”. “They were the decoration on a picture, which is an important message.”
To put the Israeli-European relationship back on track, Amrani called on EU leaders to “speak beyond domestic politics and show moral clarity and political leadership” by standing up to those who accuse Israel of genocide.
Matthew Karnitschnig contributed reporting.
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