EU aid to Palestinians is more needed than ever – stopping it would be a gift to Hamas | Martin Konečný

Brussels is right to backtrack on its threats – cutting the territories’ largest aid package would only inflame the crisis

Justified shock and outrage over the Hamas atrocities in Israel are driving some European politicians into ill-judged responses that risk exacerbating this crisis. Four European Union member states – Austria, Germany, Denmark and Sweden – have announced they will review and temporarily suspend their bilateral development aid to the Palestinian territories. On Monday, the EU commissioner Olivér Várhelyi unexpectedly declared – in a social media post – a freeze on EU development assistance to the Palestinians worth €690m. The scale of terror against Israel was “a turning point”, Várhelyi wrote. Providing around €300m annually, the EU is the occupied territories’ largest international source of aid.

The Hungarian commissioner’s solo, and seemingly unauthorised, move was later reversed after a backlash from several governments, along with objections from the EU’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell, and the European Council president Charles Michel. The EU will now review its aid, not formally suspend it. Várhelyi – who was nominated by the Hungarian premier Viktor Orbán, a close ally of Benjamin Netanyahu – is in charge of EU relations with neighbouring countries and rarely misses an opportunity to position himself as Israel’s staunchest ally in Brussels.

Martin Konečný runs the European Middle East Project (EuMEP), a Brussels-based NGO

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/jsq4DpO