It is safe to say that no one in the Prime Minister’s Office or the Foreign Ministry fell off their chairs when they heard the most recent comments by the prime ministers of Spain, Belgium, and Ireland regarding the Israel-Hamas war.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who held a bizarre press conference at Rafah with his Belgian counterpart Alexander De Croo minutes before the first 13 Israeli hostages were to be released on Friday, called for a permanent ceasefire and said that if the EU does not recognize a Palestinian state, Spain might do so unilaterally on its own.
In other words, some 3,000 Hamas terrorists invade Israel, murder, rape, burn, mutilate, and plunder, and their reward from Spain will be to be recognized as an independent state.
At that press conference before the hostage release, which the Spanish and Belgian leaders had no reason to call, because they had nothing to do with the negotiations that led to the deal, the Belgian prime minister also had his own vacuous pearls of wisdom.
“We cannot accept a society is destroyed the way the society of Gaza is being destroyed,” he said, without stating clearly that it is Hamas that has been destroying Gaza. He then launched into some la-la-land-like rhetoric about “One day people will need to talk to each other, and a political solution is the only solution that is possible.”
As if any kind of political agreement is possible if Hamas is still standing after this war.
And then there was Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, who welcomed the return of dual Irish-Israeli citizen Emily Hand by posting on X that “an innocent child who was lost has now been found and returned.”
In Varadker’s telling, it is as if nine-year-old Emily went to a crowded beach with her family, got separated for a while from her parents, and was later returned by a benevolent lifeguard, not that she was barbarically ripped away from family and home and held as a hostage for 51 days by Hamas terrorists.
Why couldn’t the Irish prime minister utter that awful truth? Because to do so would be to undermine the false narrative that his government and Irish governments and various Irish political parties have been peddling for years about defenseless Palestinians being oppressed by ruthless and heartless Israelis and “settlers.”
So, why was no one surprised by these comments in Jerusalem? Because they were coming from the usual suspects. For decades now, these three countries, along with others such as Portugal, Malta, and Luxembourg, have led a blindly pro-Palestinian faction inside the EU.
Their recent comments prove the dictum: old habits die hard. But the EU itself is proof that sometimes old habits do die. For instance, looking back at the EU over the last 25 years, it is impossible not to see changes inside the EU when it comes to Israel.
Change is possible
If in the past, countries like Belgium, Ireland, and Spain used to easily get condemnations of Israel passed in EU forums, now it is more difficult as countries such as the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, and even Germany will block such moves. Which is why Sánchez said that if the EU does not recognize “the state of Palestine” – something that won’t happen – Spain may do so unilaterally.
If Spain does unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state, it won’t be the first EU country to do so. Sweden was the first to do so in October 2014, in a move that infuriated Israel and sent bilateral ties between the two countries into a tailspin.
Today, however, things have changed, and Sweden – once among Israel’s greatest detractors inside the EU – is, as a result of a government change there that brought a right-wing government into power, now among Israel’s supporters in the EU.
Change is possible – just look at Cyprus and Greece, who a couple of decades earlier had attitudes toward Israel similar to those of Ireland, Belgium, and Spain today, yet now are among Israels strong allies.
Attitudes in Spain and Belgium could change, though it is doubtful this will happen anytime soon. In the meantime, it will be interesting to watch and see whether other EU countries follow Spain and Belgium’s lead and call now for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
If the current truce is extended to allow for further hostage releases, there will be intense public pressure in Europe to stop the war, as images of the destruction inside Gaza continues to flood European news channels. Israel quickly responded to the statements of the Irish, Belgian, and Spanish leaders, with both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Foreign Ministry decrying them, and the Foreign Ministry calling in the ambassadors of those countries to clarify those remarks.
Israel signaling its complete opposition to talk of a permanent ceasefire now is something the country will increasingly need to do if it hopes to continue the military offensive against Hamas.
With the cannons temporarily silent, this is the hour for a full-court Israeli diplomatic press in Europe to make it clear why Israel cannot agree to a ceasefire now, with Hamas still standing.
One of Israel’s talking points in trying to secure Western legitimacy for continuing to wage its war against Hamas is to say that, if Israel does not knock out this ISIS-like terrorist organization, then its fanatical brand of Islamist jihad ideology will spread. Or, as Foreign Minister Deputy Director-General for Europe Daniel Meron said in a Kan Bet interview on Sunday, “The West is next.”
And he’s right.
But there is also another strong argument for wiping out Hamas’s military capabilities that will resonate now that many in the world are saying that the October 7 attack and the Hamas-Israel war show the need to find a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: No political solution will ever be possible as long as Hamas and its sister terrorist organizations remain a factor in Palestinian society.
It just won’t happen. They don’t want peace with Israel, ever. And after October 7, it is a pipe dream to believe that Israel will be willing to make concessions to Hamas until it is eradicated as a military threat.