EU Commissioner Mairead McGuinness has defended the EU response to the crisis in Gaza and denied that Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had made the situation more difficult with her comments.
Her comments came as Taoiseach Leo Varadkar travels to Brussels to attend a meeting of EU leaders to discuss the huge challenges posed by two major conflicts on Europe’s doorsteps – the ongoing war in Ukraine and the outbreak of a bloody conflict in the Middle East.
The meeting in Brussels will happen just as the Department of Foreign Affairs has warned Irish citizens to leave Lebanon because of the highly volatile situation there.
Speaking on Newstalk radio, Ms McGuinness said that Ms von der Leyen had shown “incredible leadership” on very complex topics. She respected the President for her leadership during the pandemic and in her response to the war in Ukraine.
Ms von der Leyen faced criticism for initially stating her support for Israel without any call for its actions in Gaza to comply with international law.
Last week President Michael D Higgins said Ms von der Leyen was “not speaking for Ireland”, while Mr Varadkar said her comments “lacked balance”.
Ms McGuinness said the priority now needed to be humanitarian aid for Gaza and that would be the focus of the EU. She acknowledged there were “nuances” in the difference between responses from some countries. The key issue was how could the “turmoil, death and destruction” end.
“Somebody has to talk about how do we resolve this? And we've been talking.”
It was important that the message from Thursday’s council meeting reinforce condemnation of the Hamas attack on October 7th, but also that Israel needed to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.
The people there were innocent victims and they had to be protected “in this horrible war.”
Ms McGuinness denied that the EU response to Gaza had been delayed. “This is a very fluid situation. I am extremely cautious about how fragile the situation is. Listen to what [US] president Joe Biden said to Israel. He actually said, don't do what we did after 9/11 because we made mistakes in the past.”
The Commissioner said she was relieved there had not yet been a ground incursion by Israel, but there was continued bombardment and children were dying. There were “deep historical hurts” on both sides.
Europe has been very strong on the need for Israel to comply with international and humanitarian law, she said. “Today, when leaders meet, I think they understand that this is a situation which could unfold in a very bad way, we could go from bad to even worse, and there could be an escalation of this in the region itself”.
