Costa at the UN: time to fully implement the roadmap for Gaza. Yet the EU remains unable to turn words into action

Brussels – “There is no alternative” to the two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, insisted UN Secretary-General António Guterres, for the umpteenth time, as he opened the general debate of the 81st UN General Assembly. “Time is running out”, and the foundations for a future Palestinian state are gradually being eroded. The President of the European Council, António Costa, speaking in New York, pressed for the need to move from words to deeds at the international meeting on the two-state solution and the Comprehensive Peace Plan for Gaza. 

“It is high time to fully implement the roadmap for Gaza,” Costa stressed, outlining three steps: the disarmament of Hamas accompanied by an Israeli withdrawal, the deployment of the International Stabilisation Force and police, and the entry into the Strip of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza. The President of the European Council recalled that 142 countries had endorsed the New York Declaration on the two-state solution and that Security Council Resolution 2803 had provided an operational framework for the peace plan. But one year later, “the situation on the ground has barely improved,” he noted. 

The appeal also concerns the humanitarian emergency. “Winter is coming, and two million people face another winter in tents and rubble,” said Costa, noting that the problem is not a lack of funds or aid but that “access remains blocked.” And in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the two-state solution is undermined every day by settler violence, impunity, forced displacement and “de facto annexation”. The settlements, he pointed out, are illegal under international law. 

This is where the European Union comes in. “The real friends of Israel and of the Israeli people – among them the European Union – have been saying that the current status quo is unacceptable,” said Costa, in a remark that also sounds like a distancing from Washington’s more wait-and-see stance. Brussels, he pointed out, has been the main donor to the Palestinians since the 1990s and continues to run the EUBAM Rafah and EUPOL COPPS missions, which the EU is ready to strengthen.

However, Europe’s ability to turn this stance into political pressure remains its weak point. In her latest State of the Union, Ursula von der Leyen devoted just one brief passage to the war in Gaza, accusing Member States of failing to secure the necessary majorities to adopt the European Commission’s proposed measures. Yet the June European Council had already set out the political line: unhindered humanitarian aid, access for international organisations, full implementation of Resolution 2803, the disarmament of Hamas, an Israeli withdrawal and the deployment of an international stabilisation force. The problem, therefore, no longer seems to be defining what Europe should do, but doing it. “Only the Two-State Solution can lead to a just and comprehensive resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” with Israel and an independent, democratic, contiguous, sovereign, and viable State of Palestine living side by side in peace and security, with Jerusalem serving as the future capital of both states, Costa said.