Israeli and Palestinian foreign ministers set to join Brussels meeting
They have both confirmed their attendance at an EU-Southern Neighbourhood ministerial meeting, The National understands.
While it appears that Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar and his Palestinian counterpart Varsen Aghabekian will be in the same room, it remains unclear whether they will speak.
The meeting comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hoped for a truce soon in Gaza as talks continued in Qatar.
'We would like for us as Palestinians to speak for ourselves at this meeting and send a message to Europeans about the humanitarian crisis for Palestinians and ask that they take measures against Israel,' a Palestinian official told Euronews.
The aim of the Brussels meeting is to strengthen relations between the EU and the 10 partner countries in the Mediterranean region.
They include Algeria, Egypt and Jordan. Syria has been reintegrated since the fall of the Assad regime in December and its Foreign Minister Assad Al Shibani is expected to attend.
The last such meeting took place in November 2022 in Barcelona, just under a year before the October 7 Hamas-led attacks against Israel.
Relations between Israel and the EU appear to have warmed since Kaja Kallas was appointed the bloc's foreign affairs chief in December.
Ms Kallas on Thursday announced that she had struck a deal with Israel to increase the amount of aid entering Gaza. A meeting of the EU's 27 foreign ministers on Tuesday is set to discuss options to respond to Israel's human rights violations in Gaza.
There is little expectation that Tuesday's meeting will lead to concrete decisions targeting Israel. Ms Kallas has said that measures would be discussed only if the situation did not improve in Gaza, though some European ministers said they would closely watch the implementation of the aid deal.
Most European countries have said they do not approve of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation's new aid distribution operation, during which hundreds of Palestinians have been killed.
Ms Kallas this week put forward 10 options to member states, including a full suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, which appeared unlikely because it needed consensus from the 27 members.
Suspending trade relations or Israel's participation in the Erasmus+ student exchange or Horizon academic research programmes would require a qualified majority vote.
Mr Saar was in Brussels in February for the first EU-Israel high level talks in years, followed by a similar meeting with Palestine's Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Middle East Eye
an hour ago
- Middle East Eye
Pro-Palestinian protestors campaign outside US home of GHF's executive director
Dozens of members from the Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement, and community members, held a protest on Sunday outside the home of John Acree, executive director of the controversial US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which is distributing aid in Gaza. More than 1,000 Palestinians seeking aid have been killed by the Israeli military and US contractors since it launched at the end of May. Acree has been accused of committing war crimes. The protestors banged pots and pans, spray-painted GHF aid boxes and a cutout of Acree's face with red paint, and flyered his neighbourhood.
The National
2 hours ago
- The National
Starmer has run out of road on Palestinian statehood
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer's late-life emergence as a politician means that he has been dogged by questions over how politically effective his instincts are. The devastation of Gaza is something that obviously transcends politics – or at least it should. Yet, as the objective reality of the Palestinians' suffering is broadcast daily on television sets across the UK, Mr Starmer's political response to Israel's war could not be more exposed. In the 22 months since the outbreak of the conflict, Mr Starmer has been entirely consistent to the extent that he has steadily lost almost the entirety of his supporters for his position. A letter late last week exposed how the Prime Minister had been reduced to playing for time. More than 200 MPs signed a letter calling on the UK to recognise Palestine statehood, as almost 150 nation states have done. French President Emmanuel Macron has committed his country to declaring its recognition in September at the UN General Assembly annual meeting in New York. A conference this week co-hosted with Saudi Arabia at the UN sees Paris promote the two-state solution with recognition at its heart. UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy is expected to attend. Yet Mr Starmer has so far withheld the decision to join the French in the new drive to make real recognition for Palestine among the most powerful countries of the G7 bloc. For weeks, London's political calculation has been that pressure from the Knesset presented Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with an opportunity to change course. There was also the arrival to Britain of US President Donald Trump, who is holding court on his Scottish golf courses. These ultra-luxury venues have not only been a sporting paradise for Mr Trump, but also a diplomatic platform for him. On Sunday, he secured a trade deal with EU, which he called the biggest yet. On Monday, Mr Starmer spent the day with him. There, aides said Mr Starmer would use his good standing with the American leader to press his point on Gaza. The British leader said he was working with Mr Trump to find a way to address the starvation of Gazans. Mr Trump said, for the first time, that the hunger in the Strip was real and couldn't be faked. 'We can work not just on the pressing issues of the ceasefire, but also on this issue of getting humanitarian aid in at volume, at speed,' Mr Starmer said. The US President said he was pressing Mr Netanyahu to find a different way to bring the plight of the hostages to a resolution. 'I'm going to say it's a very difficult situation,' Mr Trump said. 'If they didn't have the hostages, things would go very quickly, but they do, and we know where they have them, in some cases, and you don't want to go riding roughshod over that area, because that means those hostages will be killed.' The reckoning, as the UK House of Commons' Foreign Affairs Committee put it, was that Mr Netanyahu listens to only one foreign leader: Mr Trump. Even then the Israeli Prime Minister defies Washington, so only a big pep talk from Mr Starmer could get the US leader into a frame of mind to intervene meaningfully. All that was a calculation rather than a guaranteed outcome. Mr Starmer's team did not want to alienate Mr Trump by announcing the UK's recognition in advance of their meeting. Alienating the US President would provide some poor dynamics for the Scotland meetings, something Mr Starmer was not prepared to countenance. UK Secretary of State for Business and Trade Jonathan Reynolds – the cabinet minister among the closest to Mr Starmer – echoed the judgment that only the US has leverage in the current situation. He pointed out that two temporary ceasefires were brought about by US involvement. Downing Street has said the same thing, although it appears to be ignoring the fact that US envoy Steve Witkoff withdrew from the process last week. Mr Reynolds was asked repeatedly about the prospect of the Prime Minister caving into political pressure this week. Despite the recess, the cabinet is set to meet for a discussion on Palestine, setting speculation off that a U-turn was coming. In advance of any new approach emerging, Mr Reynolds raised the standing concern from Mr Starmer's camp that recognition must not be a 'tokenistic' exercise. Deploying the decision once should have a tangible impact. 'It is a case of when, not if,' he said. 'It's about how we use this moment, because you can only do it once to have a meaningful breakthrough.' That line has held sway at Westminster for quite some time. However, not only has the number of MPs in the Labour party rejecting it openly now into the hundreds, but up to half the cabinet are now holding private briefings that this cannot stand. For most, there is a moral and humanitarian imperative that cannot wait. History, too, is powerful here. As the country that intervened through the Balfour Declaration to endorse Zionism's project to settle in Palestine, there are many in London who believe that Britain has a historic responsibility to promote equal rights for Palestinians and Israelis. The Labour government that took power last year was overtly committed to 'leading on international law issues', something that suggested a spirit of rebalancing how the UK developed its policies. Most remarkably, however, Attorney General Richard Hermer has not developed a response to the International Court of Justice's provisional measures on the Gaza conflict. Mr Starmer is a distinguished lawyer in this field and if his political skills have come under scrutiny on this issue, then it is a double indictment that his legal expertise appears to have disappeared as well. There is ultimately no riddle here. Mr Starmer has played for time for so long on this issue that he has utterly run out of road for his position on Palestine.
Khaleej Times
2 hours ago
- Khaleej Times
Trump vows to set up food centres in Gaza as over 140 die from starvation
US President Donald Trump said on Monday many people were starving in Gaza and suggested Israel could do more on humanitarian access, as desperate Palestinians hoped for aid a day after the Israeli military announced steps to improve supplies. As the death toll from two years of war in Gaza nears 60,000, a growing number of people are dying from starvation and malnutrition, Gaza health authorities say, with images of starving children shocking the world and fuelling international criticism of Israel over sharply worsening conditions. Describing starvation in Gaza as real, Trump's assessment put him at odds with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said on Monday "there is no starvation in Gaza" and vowed to fight on against the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Trump, speaking during a visit to Scotland, said Israel has a lot of responsibility for aid flows, and that a lot of people could be saved. "You have a lot of starving people," he said. "We're going to set up food centres," with no fences or boundaries to ease access, Trump said. The US would work with other countries to provide more humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza, including food and sanitation, he said. On Monday, the Gaza health ministry said at least 14 people had died in the past 24 hours of starvation and malnutrition, bringing the war's death toll from hunger to 147, including 88 children, most in just the last few weeks. Israel announced several measures over the weekend, including daily humanitarian pauses in three areas of Gaza, new safe corridors for aid convoys, and airdrops. The decision followed the collapse of ceasefire talks on Friday. UN agencies said a long-term steady supply of aid was needed. The World Food Programme said 60 trucks of aid had been dispatched — short of target. Almost 470,000 people in Gaza are enduring famine-like conditions, with 90,000 women and children in need of specialist nutrition treatments, it said. "Our target at the moment, every day is to get 100 trucks into Gaza," WFP Regional Director for the Middle East, North Africa, and Eastern Europe, Samer AbdelJaber, told Reuters. Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, told Reuters the situation is catastrophic. "At this time, children are dying every single day from starvation, from preventable disease. So time has run out," he said. "The catastrophe is here," he said. "Children are dying from starvation, and it's manmade by Israel from A to Z." Netanyahu denied any policy of starvation towards Gaza, saying aid supplies would be kept up whether Israel was negotiating a ceasefire or fighting, he said. Hamas 'shall be there no more' "We will continue to fight till we achieve the release of our hostages and the destruction of Hamas' military and governing capabilities. They shall be there no more," Netanyahu said. Trump said Hamas had become difficult to deal with in recent days, but he was talking with Netanyahu about "various plans" to free hostages still held in the enclave. The Gaza health ministry said that 98 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the past 24 hours. In Gaza, Palestinians described the challenge of securing aid for their families living in tent encampments, a chaotic and often dangerous process. "Currently aid comes for the strong who can race ahead, who can push others and grab a box or a sack of flour. That chaos must be stopped and protection for those trucks must be allowed," said Emad, 58, who used to own a factory in Gaza City. While some manage to get aid, others are deprived, said Wessal Nabil, from Beit Lahiya. She said her husband was unable to bring aid because of an injured leg. She had tried herself several times but without success. "So who will feed us? Who will give us to drink?" she told Reuters. The WFP said it has 170,000 metric tons of food in the region, outside Gaza, which would be enough to feed the whole population for the next three months if it gets the clearance to bring into the enclave. COGAT, the Israeli military aid coordination agency, said that over 120 trucks were distributed in Gaza on Sunday by the UN and international organisations. Some of the trucks that made it into Gaza were seized by desperate Palestinians, and some by armed looters, witnesses said. More aid was expected on Monday. Qatar said it had sent 49 trucks that arrived in Egypt en route for Gaza. Jordan and the United Arab Emirates airdropped supplies. Israel cut off aid to Gaza from the start of March in what it said was a means to pressure Hamas into giving up dozens of hostages it still holds, and reopened aid with new restrictions in May. Hamas accuses Israel of using hunger as a weapon. Israel says it abides by international law but must prevent aid from being diverted by militants, and blames Hamas for the suffering of Gaza's people.
