Category World News

The European Commission, the European Union’s main executive body, has presented a much anticipated and delayed proposal to “suspend certain trade-related provisions of the Association Agreement between the EU and Israel” in response to Israel’s war on Gaza.

The sanctions, however, do not currently have enough support among the EU’s 27 member countries to pass. The proposals announced on Wednesday also included suggested sanctions on “extremist” Israeli ministers and violent settlers as well as on Hamas.

Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief, urged the member nations to increase tariffs on some Israeli goods and impose sanctions on 10 Hamas leaders, Israeli settlers, and two far-right members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet: National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

The commission also said it was pausing its bilateral support to Israel with the exception of support to civil society and Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center.

“The proposals follow a review of Israel’s compliance with Article 2 of the Agreement, which found that actions taken by the Israeli government represent a breach of essential elements relating to respect for human rights and democratic principles. This entitles the EU to suspend the Agreement unilaterally,” the commission said.

“Specifically, this breach refers to the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza following the military intervention of Israel, the blockade of humanitarian aid, the intensifying of military operations and the decision of the Israeli authorities to advance the settlement plan in the so-called E1 area of the West Bank, which further undermines the two-state solution,” it added.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said: “The horrific events taking place in Gaza on a daily basis must stop. There needs to be an immediate ceasefire, unrestrained access for all humanitarian aid and the release of all hostages held by Hamas.”

“Reflecting these principled commitments and taking into account serious recent developments in the West Bank, we propose to suspend trade concessions with Israel, sanction extremist ministers and violent settlers, and put bilateral support to Israel on hold without affecting our work with Israeli civil society or Yad Vashem,” von der Leyen added.

Late last month, foreign ministers from across the EU tussled in Denmark’s Copenhagen over what action to take in response to Israel’s punishing war on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and heavy crackdown in the occupied West Bank as the bloc’s aid chief urged them to “find a strong voice that reflects our values and principles”.

Growing numbers of protesters have taken to the streets across Europe in recent months to demand action from their governments to pressure Israel to end its war on Gaza, which a United Nations inquiry on Tuesday found to be genocide.

But the EU so far has failed to agree on a unified course of action to pressure Israel to end its bombardment and blockade of Gaza.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from Gaza City as Israel’s deadly ground invasion in its genocidal war continues.

An Israeli army spokesperson announced on Tuesday a “temporary” evacuation route for Palestinians via Salah al-Din Street, available for just 48 hours.

Avichay Adraee stated on X that residents could move along Salah al-Din Street southwards from Wadi Gaza.

“Transit through this route will be available for 48 hours starting today … and until Friday,” he said.

Israel has repeatedly struck residential areas, schools and hospitals throughout the Gaza Strip during the 23-month conflict.

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Nuseirat in central Gaza, said: “More and more Palestinian families are fleeing Gaza City under the threat of Israeli attacks with no guarantees of safety at all.”

“While we’re here, we met friends, relatives and neighbours, and they told us they spent more than thirteen hours to make this difficult journey to the south of the Strip because of the vast overcrowding of roads. People say they’re totally exhausted,” he said.

“We also met a number of dual nationals still stuck in Gaza who said this is the fifth time they were forced to flee from one area to another under the echoes of explosions and the wide-scale mass expulsion orders issued by the Israeli military,” he added.

“Everyone on the ground is going through a serious crisis. It is a systematic policy by Israel to control Palestinian land and reshape it. What is still unfolding is a humanitarian calamity with no safe exits,” Abu Azzoum explained.

The widow of Russian dissident Alexey Navalny says laboratory tests reveal that he was poisoned before his death in prison last year.

Yulia Navalnaya made the accusation in a video posted on X on Wednesday, suggesting that her husband, who died in a remote Arctic penal colony, was murdered.

The 47-year-old anticorruption campaigner, who was serving a 19-year sentence at the time of his death, was an outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Navalnaya said that before his burial, his allies “were able to obtain and securely transfer biological samples of Alexey abroad”. They were then sent to two laboratories for testing, she added.

“These labs in two different countries reached the same conclusion: Alexey was killed. More specifically, he was poisoned,” Navalnaya said.

Navalnaya, who did not give further information about the samples or the results of the tests, urged the laboratories to release their findings about what she called the “inconvenient truth”.

There was no immediate comment from the Kremlin, which has denied any involvement in Navalny’s death. Authorities have previously said he died suddenly while on a walk in the IK-3 penal colony, located in Kharp in the Yamalo-Nenets region.

Russian investigators have said the opposition figure died from “a combination of disease”, a conclusion dismissed by Navalnaya.

Navalny was poisoned in August 2020 in Russia before being flown to Germany for treatment.

German officials confirmed at the time that he had been poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok. Then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel said there were “serious questions that only the Russian government can and must answer”.

The Kremlin has always denied any involvement in Navalny’s illness.

After his recovery, Navalny returned to Russia, where he was arrested upon arrival and sent to prison. He was eventually convicted in multiple cases on charges that included fraud and “extremism”. He and his supporters maintained these were politically motivated charges.

In his memoir Patriot, which was posthumously published in October, Navalny wrote that he was resigned to the possibility of dying in detention.

“I will spend the rest of my life in prison and die here,” he wrote on March 22, 2022.

“There will not be anybody to say goodbye to. … All anniversaries will be celebrated without me. I’ll never see my grandchildren.”