Senior EU Official Says Israel’s Gaza Assault ‘Looks Very Much’ Like Genocide

Brussels (Quds News Network)- A senior member of the European Union’s executive has said that Israel’s forced displacement, killing, and starving of Palestinians in Gaza looked very much like genocide, marking the first time a commissioner has made such an admission and publicly broken with the EU’s official stance on the assault.

“If it is not genocide, it looks very much like the definition used to express its meaning,” Teresa Ribera, the European Commission’s second-highest ranking official, told Politico in an interview published on Thursday.

“What we are seeing is a concrete population being targeted, killed and condemned to starve to death,” Ribera said.

Her statements went further than the European Commission, which has accused Israel of violating human rights in Gaza, but stopped short of accusing it of genocide.

In that proposal, the Commission said Israel had violated a human rights clause in an agreement that governs its relations with the EU.

“With its intervention in the Gaza Strip and the ensuing humanitarian catastrophe, including thousands of civilian deaths and rapidly rising numbers of spreading extreme malnutrition, specifically of children, Israel is violating human rights and humanitarian law,” it wrote.

Her remarks came amid growing pressure within the EU against Israel over its ongoing assault in Gaza, where over 60,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023.

European nations like Ireland, the Netherlands and Spain have increasingly called for the EU’s ties with Israel to be reassessed in the wake of the war in Gaza.

The EU’s association agreement with Israel is a framework for trade and political relations. The bloc is Israel’s largest trading partner, accounting for nearly a third of Israel’s global trade, according to EU data.

The calls for suspending the deal come as a number of countries have announced they will recognise the State of Palestine in response to Israel’s continuing onslaught on Gaza and blockade.

Ribera‘s remarks came days after B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights said Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. The announcement was the first time major Israeli rights groups have publicly concluded that the Gaza war is a genocide, an assessment previously reached by some organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.