Israel will not face any EU sanctions before October, as diplomats monitor a sketchy Gaza aid deal and human rights groups cry "betrayal".
"We will keep a close watch on how Israel implements the deal and will update on compliance every two weeks," said EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas after meeting EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Tuesday (15 July)
Her reports will be filed to the Political and Security Committee, a club of EU ambassadors in the EU Council, she noted.
"We will keep [sanctions] options on the table and react if Israel is not in compliance," she said — looking ahead to the next foreign ministers' meeting, due on 6 October, after the summer recess.
"More trucks and supplies are [already] reaching Gaza, more crossing points are open, we see electrical supplies being repaired," she added.
Kallas had drafted the sanctions options following her "review" of Israel's actions, which said Israel was guilty of using "starvation" as a weapon of war, "indiscriminate" killing of civilians, "apartheid", and "torture" of prisoners.
The main option under consideration was freezing Israel's EU free-trade perks, under an EU-Israel association agreement, worth some €1bn/yr to Israeli firms.
But Kallas and Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa'ar agreed an 11th-hour aid deal last Thursday, giving Israel-friendly countries, such as Germany and Italy, a pretext to put off action.
The EU's aim was "not to punish [Israel], but to improve the situation on the ground [in Gaza]," Kallas said.
The Kallas-Sa'ar deal was a verbal accord, rather than a text with figures and dates for aid deliveries, so there is no "mechanism" to delve into
Irish deputy foreign minister Thomas Byrne said: "Lots of people around the table [in Tuesday's EU meeting] didn't want any further action [against Israel]".
Trade sanctions aside, 26 member states had agreed to blacklist more extremist Israeli settlers, but Hungary, Israel's main EU ally, vetoed even this, Byrne said.
Poland had also pushed for the listings, noting that Israeli fanatics had set fire to a 5th century AD Christian church in the West Bank last week, Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski said.
And the EU inaction came as a disappointment to Spain as well as Ireland.
"Anything that allows food, medicine, fuel into Gaza will be welcome to us, but I want to know more about the mechanism," said Spanish foreign minister José Manuel Albares.
(The Kallas-Sa'ar deal was a verbal accord, rather than a text with figures and dates for aid deliveries, so there is no "mechanism" to delve into.)
Albares added that letting in food and medicine to Gaza was a "bare minimum" and that the EU should anyway impose an arms embargo on Israel due to the "unjustifiable violence in Gaza".
Meanwhile, Israel's allies, such as Austria, also spoke out.
The EU needed to keep open channels of communication "especially among friends [Israel]" to improve the situation in Gaza, said Austrian foreign minister Beate Meinl-Reisnger.
"I think one should be very careful with the term 'genocide' and it will ultimately be the court [the International Court of Justice in The Hague] that has to judge it," she said, when asked by press on Israel's massacre of 58,400 people in Gaza so far.
"Hamas [a Palestinian militant group] has it in their hands" to make peace, she added, by laying down arms and freeing Israeli hostages.
German deputy foreign minister, Gunther Krichbaum, said: "It is important to point out that it was Israel that was attacked here [by Hamas on 7 October 2023]".
"Israel has the right to defend itself," he said.
Lars Løkke Rasmussen, the foreign minister of Denmark, which holds the EU presidency, also praised Kallas' deal, saying: "The most important thing is not megaphone diplomacy, but to change the conditions on the ground".
The outcome of Tuesday's talks was sharply criticised by civil society, amid widespread public anger against Israel in Europe.
"Now [EU foreign ministers] will head off for their summer holiday, while Palestinian families in Gaza suffer another day of atrocities," said campaign group Ekō.
"Individual states have their own decision [to make]: Will they follow the EU into historical disgrace, or heed their people and take meaningful action?," Ekō added.
Amnesty International's secretary general, Agnès Callamard, said: "The EU's refusal to suspend its [trade] agreement with Israel is a cruel and unlawful betrayal — of the European project and vision".
"European leaders had the opportunity to take a principled stand against Israel's crimes, but instead gave it a green light to continue its genocide in Gaza," she added.
Kallas' aid deal was "breadcrumbs", Oxfam's Bushra Khalidi also said.
"Aid alone cannot stop this catastrophe. We cannot continue to watch children killed and say 'we are making progress'," she added.
In one ray of light for Palestine, the French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, said France and Saudi Arabia had renewed plans to hold a meeting in New York on 28 and 29 July on recognition of Palestinian statehood.
But another campaign group, Somo, published figures on Tuesday showing what pro-Palestinian campaigners were up against.
EU member states held €72.1bn in foreign investment in Israel in 2023 (compared to €39.2bn in the US), it noted.
EU exports to Israel also grew by €1bn to reach €26.7bn in 2024.
And the Israeli stock exchange soared by 213 percent in the past 21 months of war, which meant €194bn in market gain.
"The EU is the main engine of Israel's economy of genocide," Somo said.
Graeme Groom, an orthopaedic surgeon at King's College Hospital in London, who recently worked in Gaza, said: "We sat in Brussels and told EU officials what we'd witnessed: children pulled from rubble, families wiped out, hospitals under fire."
"We believed the EU stood for human rights and we expected action ... and while diplomats head off on summer holidays, what am I supposed to tell my colleagues still working under fire in Gaza?", he said.
This story was corrected to say the next EU foreign ministers' meeting is due in October, not September
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Andrew Rettman is EUobserver's foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.
Andrew Rettman is EUobserver's foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.