James Moran / Oct 2025
Photo: Shutterstock
The Trump peace plan to end the war on Gaza announced on 30 September has been welcomed by several European countries and Arab States, including the Palestinian Authority. Council President Costa was ‘encouraged’ by it. However, the 20 points that comprise the plan lack detail on how it is to be implemented, and the Hamas reaction is awaited.
Hamas is now under pressure from virtually all sides, as well as from many war-weary Palestinians in Gaza. However, it seems unlikely that they will accept the plan without further talks on a number of crucial aspects, among which: how the vaunted new Governance structure for Gaza will actually work, including whether people like Tony Blair would be acceptable to the Palestinians, given his less than stellar reputation in the Arab world; the nature and timing of the proposed Israeli withdrawal from the territory and how, if at all, that is calibrated with the release of the Israeli hostages; how real are the assurances of safe passage for Hamas leaders exiting Gaza; whether US guarantees to rein in Israel can be effective; and a host of other questions.
The fact that the plan has been drawn up largely by Israel and the US, with little, if any consultation with Palestinians does nothing to address the fundamental absence of trust between the two sides, now virtually absent after two years of killing and wanton destruction, with at least 66,000 dead (3% of the entire Gaza population), most of them innocent civilians, at the hands of the IDF.
It is folly to predict anything in the middle east, but in all, it would seem at best this plan represents the beginning of another round of talks, and at worst a set up to fail operation that will put the blame on Hamas and somehow justify continued Israeli aggression. Even if Hamas accepts the plan, there is no guarantee that the far-right Israeli government will not eschew it, just as it did when breaking the last ceasefire earlier this year.
Meantime, the EU, which played virtually no part in drawing up the Trump plan, continues to be something of a bystander. That said, there has been massive pressure from public opinion, including from the EU’s own staff and a group of some 400 former EU and member state Ambassadors and Senior Officials, who have been calling for action.
Against that background, recent weeks have seen significant movement: 16 member states, plus the UK, now recognise the State of Palestine following the UN conference last month; moreover, Ursula Von der Leyen recently proposed some measures designed to send a clear message to Israel that it is in breach of its EU agreements and needs to bring its assault on Gaza to an end.
The most effective of these measures would be to suspend the preferential trade agreement under the EU-Israel Association Agreement, which covers over a third of all Israel’s €70 billion commerce in goods and services. This is something that can be achieved under Qualified Majority Voting procedures. As of now, a positive QMV is close, but not yet there. Germany will likely not vote in favour, given its longstanding commitment to Israel born of its war guilt. Other negatives include the usual outliers such as Hungary and Slovakia. That leaves the main holdout, namely Italy.
Georgia Meloni gave a sign at the UN that her previously pro-Israeli position may be moving, but she has yet to make clear what Italy would be prepared to accept at EU level. Given its traditionally strong relations with southern mediterranean countries and the Arab world in general, many find it hard to understand where Rome is coming from.
More generally Italy also has a strong interest in ensuring that the EU’s new flagship ‘Pact for the mediterranean’, due to be announced in a few weeks, gets a positive reception at home and abroad, not least because it will probably include new plans and projects to help ameliorate Ms Meloni’s overriding worries about illegal migration.
European action vis-à-vis Israel will not in itself force the Netanyahu government to change course, but in the by no means unlikely event that the Trump plan fails, and a way is found to get internal agreement on substantive measures, it might help to tip the balance when it comes to stopping the ongoing carnage in Gaza.
It might also help to restore the EU’s reputation for standing up for its professed values and the rules-based order in the wider world, so badly damaged by widespread accusations of double standards when its stance on Israel is compared with that on Ukraine.
