The foreign ministers of 25 nations, including much of Europe along with Japan, Canada and Australia, have issued a Joint Statement demanding that the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu end its total war on Gaza immediately.
The governments of these countries issued what they called a simple and urgent message: “the war in Gaza,” they insisted, “must end now.”
They underline that the “suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths.” These countries point out that the current militarized aid distribution mechanism is “dangerous” and “deprives Gazans of human dignity.”
Referring to the tiny amount of aid being delivered by the Israeli army, and the propensity of its troops to shoot down dozens of aid seekers every day, the foreign ministers write, “We condemn the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food.”
Referring to all the Palestinians applying for aid who have been shot down, they say “It is horrifying that over 800 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid.”
The Israeli blockade on food and other aid to the Palestinians in Gaza, they emphasize, “is unacceptable.” They instruct the Israeli army to obey International Humanitarian Law and to “immediately lift restrictions on the flow of aid and to urgently enable the UN and humanitarian NGOs to do their life saving work safely and effectively.”
They point out that if anyone actually cared about securing the release of the Israeli hostages, ending the fighting is the best way to accomplish it. It is hard to discern snark in diplomatic documents, but if this were an oral statement I think it would be icily sardonic.
They are frank about the unacceptability of the Israeli government’s commitment, endorsed by US President Donald Trump, to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians and to bottle them up in a tiny strip of territory in the far south of Gaza: “Proposals to remove the Palestinian population into a ‘humanitarian city’ are completely unacceptable. Permanent forced displacement is a violation of international humanitarian law.”
They also condemn Israeli plans to further divide the Palestinian West Bank, expel its population, and replace the Palestinians with Israeli squatters who steal their land and property and conduct pogroms against their villages: “settlement building across the West Bank including East Jerusalem has accelerated while settler violence against Palestinians has soared. This must stop.”
They urge “the parties” to an “immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire.”
They imply that Israel no longer has a discernible military war aim, but is just blowing shit up aimlessly: “Further bloodshed serves no purpose.”
The statement ends with a cryptic assertion that they are “prepared to take further action to support an immediate ceasefire and a political pathway to security and peace for Israelis, Palestinians and the entire region.”
“This statement has been signed by:
The Foreign Ministers of Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK; The EU Commissioner for Equality, Preparedness and Crisis Management.”
Alas, Germany, the world’s third-largest economy, is AWOL here, even though at this point it should be easy to ask that Palestinians not be starved to death while being randomly shot and blown up.
“Gaza 45,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic, 2025
Statements like this one are toothless. None of these countries has committed to doing anything practical. When the UN Security Council put sanctions on North Korea for its nuclear program, some of these countries actually stopped and boarded North Korean vessels on the high seas. No one is saying they would treat the Israeli navy that way. Most of them are implicated in supporting the Israeli arms industry and its technological advances in one way or another. Most of them allow Israeli squatters to steal Palestinian land, grow crops on it, and then export those crops for profit. Among them, France and Poland have openly repudiated their obligations under the International Criminal Court and the Rome Statute to arrest Netanyahu and to deny him overflight rights.
The government of Keir Starmer in Britain has criminalized speaking out for Palestine, so for it to sign off on this statement is particularly hypocritical. Will Foreign Secretary David Lammy be thrown to the ground by police and arrested for signing it?
It is possible that the statement is for some of these governments merely a way of appeasing the left wing of the ruling party or the increasingly distressed electorate, and consists of mere posturing — “genocide washing” if you will.
To be sure, the governments of Ireland, Spain, Norway, Slovenia and some of the others are sincere in taking this stance and have actually considered practical steps, but relatively minor ones.
In a world in which professors are being fired for simply pointing out that Israel is committing crimes against humanity in Gaza, I suppose it is praiseworthy at least to call for an end to Israel’s exercise in shooting fish in a barrel (it is not a war). But you have to wonder whether it is more shameful to say these things and then do nothing than to say nothing at all.
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