Borrell’s symbolic parting gesture is mired in hypocrisy

Diplomats and parting gestures are nothing new. As the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell comes close to ending his tenure, he has called for EU member states to stop political dialogue with Israel. “After a year of unheeded pleas, we cannot continue with business as usual,” said Borrell. Make that a year of doing nothing but upholding Israel’s security narrative, thus becoming complicit in genocide.

The EU is neither blameless nor naïve. Borrell’s last ditch attempt at steering EU diplomacy towards at least a veneer of abiding by international law is meaningless, especially when Israel’s atrocities are still not described as genocide by the bloc. Furthermore, proposing an import ban on illegal settlement products is hardly going to dent or end Israel’s genocidal intent and actions in Gaza.

Borrell’s stance has been weak throughout the genocide, and the end of his term as the EU’s high representative was never going to see him leaving an honourable legacy in this respect. In his blog which detailed a timeline of events and EU involvement since Israel’s genocide began (although the g-word is not mentioned once), Borrell makes the case for Israel’s security more than he does for protecting the Palestinians.

“When self-defence started looking more and more like revenge, our appeals grew louder, but we doubled down on our commitment to Israel’s security,” he wrote. The EU’s primary concern, therefore, was to protect Israel’s security narrative at the expense of Palestinians in Gaza. Borrell also described ethnic cleansing and genocide as “some of these illegal and immoral ideas”.

Predictably, the EU foreign ministers rejected Borrell’s proposal. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski declared that, “We know that there are tragic events in Gaza, huge civilian casualties, but we do not forget who started the current cycle of violence.”

Does Sikorsky remember who started the settler-colonialism in Palestine and who started the genocide, though? Clue: It wasn’t the Palestinians.

Cause and effect are clear, so let’s not forget the initial cause: the creation of the Zionist state of Israel in Palestine.

However, it was not just Sikorski who clearly believes that history began on 7 October 2023, and so uses the shortest timeframe to justify his stance; Borrell did the same. “Looking back, we need to acknowledge that the approach we have used for over a year with the Israeli government has failed,” he wrote. Look back even further, and see how many times the EU failed in terms of upholding international law, because the profits reaped by maintaining ties with Israel are too considerable to lose. Every time, Palestinians were forced to suffer the consequences of international diplomacy with Israel. And let’s not forget the EU’s obsession with maintaining the two-state paradigm’s relevance in rhetoric only.

Business as usual should never have happened. The EU knows it is dealing with a colonial enterprise and that it made human rights secondary to any deals between the bloc and Israel, despite the association agreements actually stipulating otherwise. Borrell’s weak stance is just a symbolic departure trinket, of purportedly having realised too late what was at stake.

The EU – Borrell included – prioritised pleading with Israel as its first diplomatic overture, and ongoing genocide is the result. Even if the EU foreign ministers decided to heed Borrell’s proposals of suspending dialogue and banning settlement products, neither are anywhere near being a tool to bring about an end to the genocide in which Europe and the US are complicit, and which most EU countries are still refusing to acknowledge, never mind stop.

Borrell’s symbolic parting gesture is mired in hypocrisy