In the past few months, European expressions of concern over the actions of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have regularly hardened into outright condemnation.
In September last year, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen expressed horror and outrage at aid restrictions that she said created a “manmade famine” in Gaza. Brussels has inveighed against settler violence and land grabs in the West Bank, which undermine the possibility of a viable Palestinian state.
Responding to the bombing of Lebanon following the US-Israeli ceasefire with Iran, EU High Representative of Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas said: “Israel’s right to self-defense does not justify this destruction.”
The angry words and exhortations have achieved nothing. Netanyahu and his ministers have generally treated European critics with barely concealed contempt, presumably reassured by the fact that their chief allies in the White House tend to behave in the same fashion. The EU is Israel’s biggest trading partner, and the academic benefits it confers through Israeli participation in the Horizon research program are considerable.
However, internal disunity, and an overoptimistic faith in the power of persuasion, has led to reluctance by the bloc to use those relationships as leverage.
Belatedly, there are indications that a change in approach might be coming.
The election humiliation for outgoing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was a bad result for Netanyahu, who lost an invaluable far-right ally. In February, Hungary was the only EU country to vote against the adoption of sanctions against violent settlers in the West Bank, blocking a measure requiring unanimity. Once Orban’s successor is in office, it is expected that the proposal could come back to the table.
More broadly, Spain is formally calling for the EU to suspend its association agreement with Israel, which gives preferential status to economic and commercial relations, on the grounds of human rights violations. Such a measure would fail to win unanimous support from key countries including Germany, but a partial suspension affecting the trade parts of the agreement — previously advocated by Von der Leyen in September — would require only a weighted majority in favor.
That might prove unachievable, as was the case last autumn, but as the extremism driving the Netanyahu government becomes ever clearer, there is little doubt that the mood is shifting.
Last week, following angry exchanges between Tel Aviv and Rome over civilian deaths in Lebanon, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni announced that the renewal of a defense cooperation agreement with Israel would be suspended “in view of the current situation.” Meloni, like Orban, could once be considered a close political ally.
As the geopolitical consequences of the spectacularly reckless and illegal US-Israel war on Iran destabilize their economies, European governments can no longer afford to sit on the sidelines and talk to Netanyahu’s hand. That one-third of Israel’s trade is done with the EU gives the latter significant cards to play; so too, the cultural and academic ties forged on a premise of shared values.
Yet, Brussels has repeatedly seen its views brushed aside as, with the help of US President Donald Trump, Israel’s prime minister pursues a maximalist regional agenda that manifestly has no place for a two-state solution. If the wind is changing in European corridors of power, it is not before time.
When 17,000 troops from the US, the Philippines, Australia, Japan, Canada, France and New Zealand spread across the Philippine archipelago for the Balikatan military exercise, running from tomorrow through May 8, the official language would be about interoperability, readiness and regional peace. However, the strategic subtext is becoming harder to ignore: The exercises are increasingly about the military geography around Taiwan. Balikatan has always carried political weight. This year, however, the exercise looks different in ways that matter not only to Manila and Washington, but also to Taipei. What began in 2023 as a shift toward a more serious deterrence posture
Reports about Elon Musk planning his own semiconductor fab have sparked anxiety, with some warning that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) could lose key customers to vertical integration. A closer reading suggests a more measured conclusion: Musk is advancing a strategic vision of in-house chip manufacturing, but remains far from replacing the existing foundry ecosystem. For TSMC, the short-term impact is limited; the medium-term challenge lies in supply diversification and pricing pressure, only in the long term could it evolve into a structural threat. The clearest signal is Musk’s announcement that Tesla and SpaceX plan to develop a fab project dubbed “Terafab”
China’s AI ecosystem has one defining difference from Silicon Valley: It is embrace of open source. While the US’ biggest companies race to build ever more powerful systems and insist only they can control them, Chinese labs have been giving the technology away for free. Open source — making a model available for anyone to use, download and build on — once seemed a niche, nerdy topic that no one besides developers cared about. However, when a new technology is driving trillions of dollars of investments and leading to immense concentrations of power, it offered an antidote. That is part of
In late January, Taiwan’s first indigenous submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, or Narwhal), completed its first submerged dive, reaching a depth of roughly 50m during trials in the waters off Kaohsiung. By March, it had managed a fifth dive, still well short of the deep-water and endurance tests required before the navy could accept the vessel. The original delivery deadline of November last year passed months ago. CSBC Corp, Taiwan, the lead contractor, now targets June and the Ministry of National Defense is levying daily penalties for every day the submarine remains unfinished. The Hai Kun was supposed to be
RSS