Al-Haq Europe acknowledges the European Union’s decision to initiate a review of Article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, as announced by High Representative Kaja Kallas on 20 May 2025. While this step is long-overdue, it must represent a genuine turning point toward accountability and the enforcement of legal obligations – not another chapter of delay and equivocation. 

For nearly 20 months, Gaza has endured an unrelenting genocidal campaign by Israel that has devastated the territory and pushed Palestinians to the very brink of total destruction. More than 53,000 Palestinians have been killed, while the entire Gaza Strip has been reduced to rubble, as Israel’s man-made famine grips the starving population. Humanitarian aid convoys remain blocked, with life-saving aid expiring at the border. What we face is not merely a humanitarian crisis – it is the systematic and deliberate destruction of the Palestinian group unfolding in real-time for all the world to see. 

The European Union has emboldened Israeli impunity by allowing the genocide to continue business-as-usual for nearly 20 months, despite persistent and flagrant violations of international law. The EU-Israel Association Agreement, in force since 2000, explicitly requires respect for human rights and democratic principles. These conditions have been repeatedly and egregiously breached, as evidenced in the three binding provisional measures orders of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the ongoing case of South Africa v. Israel, finding that Israel is plausibly committing genocide.

In addition, the ICJ in its Advisory Opinion of 19 July 2024 affirming the illegality of Israel’s occupation, has confirmed what Palestinian civil society has asserted for decades: Israel’s policies and practices – including its unlawful occupation, blockade, annexation, and apartheid regime – breach fundamental principles of international law. Israel’s very presence in the occupied Palestinian territory has been declared unlawful by the ICJ as it constitutes a breach of the inalienable Palestinian right to self-determination, the collective human right upon which all human rights are reliant.

Israel through its prolonged and unlawful occupation of Palestinian territory is unlawfully albeit steadily integrating large swathes of Palestinian territory into Israel. This annexation of Palestinian land is now taking place at an unprecedented rate, with the policies of the Israeli Government being explicitly aligned with the goals of the Israeli settler movement to expand long-term, permanent control over the occupied Palestinian territory. 

Israel through its apartheid policies and practices has been systematically denying Palestinian refugees their right of return for over seven decades, to maintain Israeli domination over the Palestinian people, in acts of continuing racial discrimination and demographic engineering. In depriving the Palestinian people of their collective and inalienable rights to self-determination and return, and undermining their ability to realise this right in the future, Israel continues to violate peremptory norms of international law which States have an erga omnes obligation to respect. This conduct amounts to an egregious, and ongoing, material breach of Article 2 of the Association Agreement that warrants its immediate termination.

This review is a necessary step, though it arrives painfully late. Calls for suspension of the agreement, made by Ireland and Spain over a year ago, were ignored. Since then, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed due to European and Third State inaction. Al-Haq Europe emphasizes that this review must not become a mere procedural exercise – indeed, the lack of effective action taken by the European Union to end this genocide for nearly 20 months may amount to complicity in Israel’s crimes. 

In addition to the termination of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, including all economic, trade, and institutional cooperation in accordance with Article 2; Al-Haq Europe further calls on the European Union to: 

• Impose a two-way arms embargo on Israel;
• Impose targeted sanctions on Israeli officials and settlers; 
• End all forms of military, security and research cooperation with Israel;
• Arrest and prosecute Israeli perpetrators of international crimes against Palestinians;
• End all exploitation of Palestinian maritime resources and energy deals with Israel, including terminating the Great Sea Interconnector;
• Ensure EU Member States uphold their obligations under the Genocide Convention, the Geneva Conventions, and the Rome Statute, as well as acting in accordance with the ICJ Advisory Opinion of 2024 by ceasing all forms of complicity with Israel’s illegal occupation.

Furthermore, we call on the EU to resist framing its role solely around humanitarian access. While addressing the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza is essential, it must not come at the expense of addressing the root causes: an ongoing, unlawful seventy-six year settler colonial apartheid regime characterized by inhumane acts fragmenting the Palestinian group, entrenched by a prolonged occupation that together deny Palestinians their rights to self-determination and return to their homeland from which they have been forcibly displaced. Any review process must be guided by these principles, not by political expediency or a procedural formality. It must signal the beginning of an end to EU complicity. Anything less would render the EU not a bystander, but an enabler. 

Time is of the essence. The EU and its 27 Member States must cease enabling Israel’s crimes through their inaction. The price of delay is being paid in Palestinian lives. The EU must take concrete actions with the urgency, seriousness and strength that this moment demands. Justice requires action.