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By Coralie Pison Hindawi
Abstract: This paper reviews the EU’s role in the conflict over Palestine, both prior to the October 7, 2023 attacks and since the start of the genocide. It documents European leaders’ unwillingness or inability to act in accordance with the international legal order the EU purports to care about. Given the gravity of the crimes committed by a major European partner, this paper argues that the lack of appropriate reaction from the EU almost two years into the genocide subverts the European project to its core and deals a likely fatal blow to European global ambitions for the decades to come.
Citation: Hindawi, Coralie Pison, 2025. “From the Ashes of Europe to the Ashes of Gaza: Searching for the EU in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” Security in Context Policy Paper 25-01. September 2025, Security in Context.
Introduction
Born in the ashes of the Second World War, the European Union (EU) aspires to be a force for good and, above all, a force for peace. The organization is informed by an obvious European ambition to exert a positive influence on the EU's Southern and Eastern neighbors and engage with the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) region. Taken from its website, the EU's policy on the Middle East and North Africa "seeks to encourage political and economic reform in each individual country" as part of its European Neighbourhood Policy. It also seeks to encourage "regional cooperation among the countries of the region themselves and with the EU (Union for the Mediterranean)" The EU also plays a particular role in the "Middle East Peace process," professing to be "actively supporting efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." Moreover, it is a member of the Middle East Quartet (along with the United States, Russia and the UN).
The EU thereby expresses its readiness to engage with the Middle East in general and more particularly the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This position can be partly explained by the role the EU aspires to play in the world, the geographic proximity of the Middle East, and the strong European representation in the world’s most powerful international body, the UN Security Council. The fact that some prominent countries within the EU bear a historical responsibility for the creation of, and support for, the Israeli state, which was established to the detriment of Palestinians' own right to statehood, must also be taken into account when considering European engagement with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
This paper reviews the EU’s role in the conflict over Palestine, both prior to the October 7, 2023 attacks and since the start of the genocide. It documents European leaders’ unwillingness or inability to act in accordance with the international legal order the EU purports to care about. Given the gravity of the crimes committed by a major European partner, this paper argues that the lack of appropriate reaction from the EU almost two years into the genocide subverts the European project to its core and deals a likely fatal blow to European global ambitions for the decades to come.
Coralie Pison Hindawi is a researcher and teacher based in France. For many years, she worked at the American University of Beirut as an assistant, then associate professor. Her research has focused on the use of coercion in the Middle Eastern context, notably in the field of arms control and disarmament, as well as on the Responsibility to Protect principle. She has notably explored the individual dimension of the doctrine, analyzed with colleagues its relevance for the situation in Palestine, and proposed several concrete steps to decolonize the doctrine. She is part of the SALAM (Sustaining Alternative Links beyond Arms and the Military) project within the PRISME initiative.
In addition to her book on Iraq and chapters in edited volumes (Oxford Handbook on the Responsibility to Protect, The United Nations and the Arab World), her work has been published in Alternatives, Critical Studies on Security, Global Governance, Journal for Conflict and Security Law, Security Dialogue and Third World Quarterly.
She blogs (in French) on the Mediapart website.
