EU Powerlessness : Conflicting Perceptions in Response to the War on Gaza

Abstract

This article aimed to scrutinize the EU’s cause of powerlessness in dealing with the confrontation, which erupted between the Israeli occupation and Gaza strip in May 2021. Due to the fact that the EU was one of the least actionist external big actors which affected the situation on ground during the war politically and diplomatically, this article tried to interpret this deficiency, as researchers have not tackled it so far. However, in serving this, forty-one EU parliamentary members’ speeches (MEPs) have been critically and thoroughly analyzed. Using content analysis, alongside other tools extracted from the realist perspective combined with one of the constructivist theoretical angles, significantly enabled the researcher in analyzing the European politicians’ discourses in this regard. It is significantly found that the revisiting EU failure in adequately tackling such an event is attributed to the biased convictions and subjective perceptions that most of the EU politicians hold about the Israeli-Palestinian cause. Conflictual diagnostic perceptions of the MEPs with regard to the exploded situation expressively shown the extent to which divisions amongst politicians have left the EU’s diplomacy miserably paralyzed; a matter that confirmed the realists’ perspective about the EU foreign policy as it is “nothing more than the combined effort of the member states’ foreign policies”. Undoubtedly, having unanimity, as a mechanism for foreign policy decision-making, contributed to putting extra burdens on the EU politicians, particularly in the dossier under investigation. Hence, light was shed on MEPs’ perspectives regarding the roots of the confrontation, justice against peace, self-defense versus right of resistance and demonization of Hamas contrasted with humanitirization of Israel.