French legal group to take EU to court for ‘failing to prevent Gaza genocide'
Legal proceedings will come on the back of the failure by EU ministers on Tuesday to agree on suspending the EU-Israel Association Agreement.
A review of the deal had found that Israel is in breach of the human rights terms associated with the agreement.
The EU-Israel agreement provides for preferential trade terms, cooperation on research, culture and security, and a framework for political dialogue.
Its human rights clause, Article 2, states that respect for democratic principles and human rights is an essential element of the partnership.
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The case, which will be filed in Luxembourg, is the first to challenge the two EU institutions for failing to act against Israel's devastating attack on Gaza.
Israel's war on Gaza has been labelled a genocide by several EU members, including Spain, Ireland and Slovenia.
The case will be filed by Jurists for the Respect of International Law (Jurdi), a French NGO, which sent formal notices on 12 and 15 May to the Commission and Council.
They called for the suspension of cooperation agreements with Israel and for a halt to arms transfers amid the ongoing Israeli campaign, which is confirmed to have killed nearly 60,000 Palestinians in 21 months.
UN's Albanese calls out 'appalling' EU failure to sanction Israel as 32-nation summit in Bogota kicks off Read More »
Jurdi is requesting that the CJEU formally acknowledge this failure to act, and order EU institutions to suspend cooperation with Israel, adopt targeted sanctions and fulfil their duty of prevention.
Jurdi's president, Patrick Zahnd, told Middle East Eye that the group is also requesting the court issue a binding order for emergency measures.
According to Jurdi, the European Commission incurs legal responsibility of EU institutions with respect to Articles 2, 3, 21, 29, and 215 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), the EU–Israel Association Agreement and the peremptory norms of international law (jus cogens).
The case argues that the EU violated four principles of international law, including the obligation to prevent genocide, the duty to end impediments to the Palestinian people's right to self-determination, the prohibition on recognition of or assistance to an unlawful situation, such as prolonged occupation, and the obligation to ensure respect for international humanitarian law, particularly in the face of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
On Tuesday, the EU's 27 foreign ministers in Brussels failed to agree on the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement.
They also failed to agree on nine other possible measures against Israel put forward after it was found to have breached human rights provisions of the trade agreement.
The measures that would have been agreed on Tuesday included full suspension of the agreement, suspension of its preferential trade provisions, an arms embargo, sanctions on Israeli ministers, or imposing a ban on trade with Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine.
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Follow Middle East Eye's live coverage of the Israel-Palestine war "The al-Zaq family called him the flower of the family. He was a quiet boy, and very much loved in his neighbourhood," he added. The youngest of eight siblings, Youssef was determined to live a full life and longed to travel. But Sahmoud said the family believes Youssef was deliberately targeted by Israel: "Youssef's birth and story exposed the occupation. That's why they didn't want him to stay alive," his cousin said, citing Israel's history of targeting and killing former Palestinian detainees. "The Israelis resented the fact that Youssef, who was born in their prison, was released. He represented a victory over them, a new lease of life. "I can't explain to you the special place Youssef held in the family," Sahmoud said. "His martyrdom left a massive hole. The Zionist occupation army snuffed out the family's source of light." Dehumanising children Youssef's story should not be the quintessential tale of childhood in Gaza. He was born in a prison and lived the rest of his life in an open-air cage. He witnessed multiple Israeli assaults. He lived through nearly two years of genocide. He died hungry, sharing a single piece of bread with his niece and nephew. He was pulled from the rubble of his home. Death has become a grim constant over the past 21 months. More than 17,000 children have been killed, according to the Gaza health ministry - a severe undercount that excludes the missing and the untold thousands still buried under rubble. Even so, that number means an average of 30 children have been killed by Israel every day since 7 October 2023 - equivalent to one classroom, or one child every 45 minutes. How does one begin to explain, let alone comprehend, Israel's disproportionate and deliberate targeting of children? With its advanced weaponry, surveillance and control over the population registry, these killings are not accidental - they are codified into policy. From the earliest days of this genocide, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invoked the biblical story of Amalek to justify mass killing in Gaza, including children. In Gaza, children are learning the alphabet through grief and hunger Ghada Abu Muaileq Read More » The killing and maiming of children - still a war crime under international law - has been given full legitimacy, and even encouragement, through the rulings of Zionist rabbis and the rhetoric of Israeli government ministers. With such dehumanising language and fear of the other, these figures openly call for the extermination of Palestinian children and "the women who produce terrorists". They proclaim that "there are no innocents in Gaza", that every Palestinian child is "already a terrorist from the moment of his birth". To that end, Israel has been consistent. Since the settler colony's founding in 1948, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians has never stopped. Genocide is no longer just an intention; it is official strategy. "Thinning out" Gaza's population is now formal government policy. Social collapse Why the children of Gaza? One million children in Gaza represent a growing youth population - a demographic challenge to an Israeli society that knows, deep down, it does not belong to a land it has drenched in Palestinian blood. Otherwise, why would it persist in violent subjugation and state murder? What kind of twisted psyche boasts of killing children and sees it as a divine right? Who celebrates the murder of innocents and sees their existence as a threat? Targeting children serves another nefarious purpose: a calculated assault on the social reproduction of an indigenous society. Why Israel is waging war on Palestinian children Read More » The goal is to collapse communal bonds and societal structures. There is the fast genocide of bombs and missiles, and the slow genocide of starvation, mass internment, and the decimation of healthcare - creating a petri dish of disease where children are the most vulnerable. From this chaos - designed to break the spirit of liberation and justice - colonial powers exploit the vacuum to expand illegal settlements and plunder natural resources. During the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, the British confined 1.5 million Kenyans in detention camps and tightly controlled villages rife with disease, starvation, torture, rape and murder. "Only by detaining nearly the entire Kikuyu population of 1.5 million people and physically and psychologically atomising its men, women and children could colonial authority be restored and the civilising mission reinstated," Harvard historian Caroline Elkins wrote. In Algeria, too, in response to anti-colonial resistance from the FLN, the French forcibly rounded up thousands of peasants at gunpoint and relocated them to guarded settlements known as camps de regroupement. The aim was to drain public support from the FLN by isolating the rural population, controlling their movements, and restricting access to resources. By the end of the Algerian War in 1962, some two million Algerians were confined to these camps, suffering from disease and malnutrition. Future freedom fighters From the British to the French to the Israelis, settler-colonial tactics have followed the same brutal logic - even as their scale and cruelty have evolved. Across time and geography, the settler-colonial project has relied not only on physical conquest but also on the erasure of identity, the fragmentation of community, and the suppression of future resistance. To a violent colonising power, a child with a book, a dream, or a memory is more dangerous than any weapon Again I ask: why the children of Gaza? They represent exactly that future - one rooted in knowledge and historical memory. In a society with one of the highest literacy rates in the region, despite decades of siege and bombardment, educated youth are not only symbols of survival; they are agents of liberation. To a violent colonising power, a child with a book, a dream, or a memory is more dangerous than any weapon. Targeting children, then, is not collateral damage. It is strategy. It is part of a broader campaign to destroy hope, overwrite the future, and maintain the machinery of occupation through fear and erasure. The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
