International pressure is mounting on Israel to end its military offensive in Gaza and to allow in significantly more humanitarian aid.
A majority of EU states on Tuesday backed a proposal to review the union’s trade relations with Israel, while Britain suspended talks with the Israelis on a new trade deal.
Israel’s near-three month blockade of food and aid supplies to the Palestinian enclave has seen a number of EU states row in behind a fresh effort to pressure it to change course.
Ireland was one of 17 of the EU’s 27 states to vote for a review of the bloc’s trade agreement with Israel. The shift in the positions of several European governments follows dire warnings about conditions inside the Gaza Strip.
Aid agencies have repeatedly warned that Israel’s blockade since March 2nd has put the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza at risk of famine, as food, fuel and other supplies begin to run out.
On Tuesday the United Nations said it had received permission from Israel for about 100 aid trucks to enter, though these had yet to be distributed.
Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Harris said the high level of support inside the EU to review the bloc’s agreement with Israel reflected the “grave concerns” about what was happening in Gaza.
British foreign minister David Lammy said the decision to suspend trade talks was a response to the “abominable” situation in the enclave. He accused Israel’s far-right government of “planning to drive Gazans from their homes into a corner of the strip in the south, and permit them a fraction of the aid that they need”.
France and Canada also said they would take “concrete actions” against Israel if it did not stop the offensive and lift restrictions on aid entering Gaza.
UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said conditions in Gaza were so bad that as many as 14,000 babies could die in the next two days, if more aid was not allowed in. Asked by the BBC for more details, a UN human rights commission spokesman said “we are pointing to the imperative of getting supplies in to save an estimated 14,000 babies suffering from severe acute malnutrition in Gaza, as the IPC partnership has warned about”.
The IPC is a multi-agency tool used to examine food security. In an analysis earlier this month, it said nearly 71,000 children in Gaza under the age of five are expected to be acutely malnourished over the next 11 months, and of these, 14,100 cases are expected to be severe.
Responding to criticism, Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said his country was engaged in a “war of civilisation over barbarism” and vowed it would “continue to defend itself by just means until total victory”.
Ireland and Spain previously called for a review of the EU’s “association agreement” with Israel, which governs relations, including trade, in February 2024, but their efforts gained little traction at the time.
A renewed push in recent weeks, led by the Dutch government, convinced a majority of EU states to order a review into whether Israel’s actions in Gaza breached commitments in the agreement to respect human rights.
The EU’s foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas said the “catastrophic” situation in Gaza had swung a “huge” majority in favour of the proposal, during a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Tuesday.
