Europe’s engagement in the Middle East

Europe has overwhelmingly supported Israel’s right to defend itself after the attack by Hamas on October 7, where over 1,000 Israeli citizens were killed and 240 kidnapped.

But, since then, the citizens of Europe have taken to the streets in protest against their government’s official position in the conflict; many protesters demanding an immediate ceasefire to Israel’s fire.

In an interview on Al Jazeera, former Greek finance minister Janis Varoufakis mentioned how many in Europe have described what is happening in Israel and Gaza as “brutal, inhuman and barbaric”.

However, what Europeans had committed in the past is by far much worse. He added it was Europeans who created the pogroms, thereby killing European Jews for centuries. Later, several European countries (not just Germany but Nazis all over Europe) subjugating Jews to the Holocaust.

Colonisation then advocated the dogma of a “land free of people for a people without a land”. The colonisers in the region conveniently overlooking the fact that Palestine was already populated and by declaring it terra nullius when it wasn’t, and then turning away from the plight of the Palestinian indigenous population. The tragedy that followed is common knowledge to most Europeans.

How much longer will Europe turn away from the suffering of the Palestinian people before their ‘collective guilt’ at the horror that was committed to European Jews in World War II is assuaged? Do we, as EU citizens, today want to see peace in these lands or further bloodshed?

If there is to be solution to the Israel/Palestinian conflict, EU citizens should start by demanding that our leaders insist on a total ceasefire in Gaza. That we want civil and political rights for all peoples in Israel and in Palestine. That secular governments should be installed and there should be an end to any discrimination on

religious, ethnic grounds and that all peoples – Jews, Moslems, Christians, Arabs, Palestinian, Druze, men, women, gays and transgender alike – are equal before the law.

Let us start with this. I believe that, in Europe today, most people are informed about the horrors of the Holocaust. I also suspect that many have heard about the Nakba. So let us demand a change to a legal system that has been the source of all the violence in Israel and Palestine.

We have to resurrect the peace process, a two-state solution based on equal civil and political rights for all who live in these lands. Our only demand is that there is not going to be any more violence and that the heads of government and people in the EU won’t tolerate any more bloodshed.

But just focusing on Gaza will not guarantee peace or that there won’t be another escalation in the future. Should Israel and Hamas be held accountable? Of course, they should, but we outsiders should now focus on establishing a lasting peace and never forget there are those within the European family that have done far worse.

MADELEINE GERA -Valletta