Middle East tensions are back on the EU agenda – whether leaders like it or not

As Israel turns its military focus to Lebanon, the question of what will happen to Gaza after the tanks and troops eventually pull out of the devastated Palestinian strip still hangs unanswered.
Entering its second year, Israel’s war in Gaza has displaced most of the population and killed more than 41,600 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. The invasion has levelled neighbourhoods and destroyed basic infrastructure, as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) seek to eliminate Hamas militants, in retaliation for their October 7th attacks in southern Israel.
Earlier this week journalists in Brussels were invited to a series of briefings with some current and former Israeli officials, organised by the Europe Israel Press Association. I was interested to hear how one of the speakers, a former senior Israeli security adviser, believed Gaza would function after the war.
Yaakov Amidror, a retired general who served as national security adviser to one of the previous Binyamin Netanyahu governments, predicted there would be a general withdrawal from the enclave, but continued incursions by the IDF afterwards targeting the remnants of Hamas forces.
“They will not have the ability to launch rockets and to invade Israel. We will have the ability to control the area and kill them inside Gaza whenever there will be a need,” said Amidror.
Known for his right-wing views, Amidror said it would take “another year to clean Gaza totally” before forces could pull out. Afterwards, he said, Gaza would become something similar to Jenin, an area in the West Bank nominally under Palestinian Authority control, where the IDF frequently clashes with armed Palestinian militants in raids.
I asked Amidror whether this vision of Gaza would mean Israel would be locked in some sort of “forever war” in the strip.
“I think that there is an assumption behind the question which is not connected to reality,” he responded. Israel had been in a long “unfinished war” with Hamas anyway, given the militant group’s goal was to destroy his country, he said. “We will have to continue to fight Hamas in Gaza, as we are fighting Hamas in Jenin, but [it] is a totally different war.”
The invasion and bombardment had crippled Hamas’s ability to fire rockets at Israel, or stage a large offensive as it did on October 7th, where it killed 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages, according to Israel. There would still be smaller “guerrilla” elements remaining after the IDF left Gaza, who Amidror said could be targeted in raids at regular intervals.
In an invasion of Lebanon, Israel would look to clear Hizbullah militants out of the south of the country, he said. The plan would be to push the Iran-backed group back over a line from beyond which their missiles would not be able to reach Israeli territory. “One of the results of the war should be that Israel is not letting Hizbullah to grow again and be another new monster near the state of Israel.”
The escalating situation on the border, where IDF ground forces this week crossed into Lebanon, has brought the Middle East back to the forefront of foreign policy debates in the European Union.
[ EU chief: Further military intervention in Lebanon ‘has to be avoided’Opens in new window ]
Leaders of the 27 member states are due to meet for a summit later this month, where their response will be watched closely. Tortuous discussions over whether to call for a “pause” or “pauses” in the fighting during the early weeks of Israel’s invasion of Gaza were seen as damaging the EU’s standing. It took the national leaders six months to finally agree on the union calling for an immediate ceasefire.
Member states such as Ireland, Spain and Slovenia have been pushing for the EU to go further. Hungary, Austria, the Czech Republic and Germany have been more sympathetic to Israel’s position. A request that the EU review its trade agreement with Israel, in light of human rights violations in Gaza, has yet to make progress.
One diplomat in Brussels recently told me that many of their EU counterparts had been happy enough to have the war in Gaza slip down the agenda over the last few months, given the difficulty in finding significant agreement on the topic.
The huge escalation in Lebanon will almost certainly mean that when the 27 national leaders sit around the European Council table in two weeks’ time, they will again be under pressure to respond. Although the experience of the last year shows that even when the EU agrees to say something, Israel is unlikely to pay much attention.