Our Wednesday News Analysis | Why Does Europe Invoke International Law on Iran, but Ignore Gaza? – Analysis

European leaders shift tone on international law over Iran, after years of shielding Israel during Gaza’s ongoing genocide. (Photo Illustration: PC)

International law is not absent from European policy.

It is activated when it aligns with strategic, economic, and political interests—and marginalized when it does not.

This does not negate the validity of legal concerns regarding the war with Iran in March 2026. Rather, it highlights the inconsistency in how those concerns are applied.

The same legal principles now cited to question the war were available throughout the genocide in Gaza from October 2023 onward.

They were not invoked with the same clarity or urgency.

A notable shift is unfolding across Europe. Governments that, for over two years since October 7, 2023, have resisted applying international law to Israel’s genocide in Gaza are now invoking that same legal framework with urgency in response to the US-Israeli war on Iran in March 2026.

This is not a marginal development. It is being articulated at the highest levels of mainstream European politics.

On March 24, 2026, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier stated that the war on Iran is “contrary to international law,” explicitly rejecting claims of self-defense justification.

Days later, on March 29, 2026, a legal analysis by Germany’s parliamentary experts concluded that the attacks violate the UN Charter’s prohibition on the use of force due to the absence of both Security Council authorization and a valid self-defense basis.

In Spain, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez had already taken a clear stance earlier in the month. On March 4, 2026, he described the US-Israeli strikes as “illegal,” a position he reiterated on March 25, 2026, while also refusing to allow Spanish bases to be used for military operations.

Italy’s Defense Minister Guido Crosetto similarly stated on March 5, 2026, that the attacks clearly breach international law.

Even more cautious actors are signaling discomfort. On March 2, 2026, French officials under President Emmanuel Macron stressed that such unilateral attacks should be addressed within the framework of the United Nations.

By March 26, 2026, France was emphasizing that any future military engagement in the region must be strictly defensive and anchored in international legitimacy.

At the European Union level, on March 1 and again on March 19, 2026, statements led by Kaja Kallas stressed adherence to the UN Charter, without endorsing the legality of the war.

These positions stand in sharp contrast to Europe’s posture during Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza...

Read more: Why Does Europe Invoke International Law on Iran, but Ignore Gaza? – Analysis

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WAR IN IRAN, CHAOS IN THE GULF, REPRESSION IN THE WEST: AND THE THREAD THAT BINDS THEM ALL IS PALESTINE

Source: The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/16/war-iran-gulf-west-palestine-occupation-us

By Nesrine Malik
Published March 16, 2026

In the Middle East, the occupation is the original sin. And those who banked on this US-backed ‘stability’ now find it giving way beneath them

A protest calling for an end to US-Israel attacks on Iran outside the US embassy in London, 7 March 2026. Photograph: Maja Smiejkowska/PA

"To expect that Israel can manage that subjugation without a constant stream of scandal, death, displacement, and military dominion in Palestine and beyond is to unrealistically expect that your turn, in one way or another, will not also come.

Netanyahu prefers to be in a costly state of war with seemingly no end rather than see a free Palestine.

His government has yoked Israel, the Middle East, and the entire world into this expanding crisis, rather than solving the fundamental issue.

A war is spiralling in the Middle East. The death toll has now reached the thousands across Iran and Lebanon. Energy prices are soaring. The Gulf seized up with Iranian strikes. It’s one of those eras that feels bewildering, incomprehensible, out of control. But there is, at the heart of it, a simple logic: everything that is unfolding is a result of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians.

As the conflagration spreads, the connection to Palestine becomes obscured. But it is clear how much of the stability of the Middle East was secured at the expense of the Palestinians. Look at the region before 7 October 2023. US policy on the Middle East focused on “integration’’: containment of Iran, signing up more Arab countries to normalise relations with Israel, and the creation, therefore, of a bloc of economic and security interests under the US military umbrella.

Iran would be isolated by this Israeli-Arab alliance, and the Palestinians’ file would be closed. Arab countries would pay lip service to them, through demanding guarantees that there would be efforts towards the creation of a Palestinian state, or that the West Bank should not be annexed. But in reality, what was on the cards was a continuation of the occupation of Palestinian territories in perpetuity.

Faith in the durability of that status quo was always wishful thinking: a form of denial about how volatile, unpredictable and explosive the situation will always remain if you occupy and settle the lands of 3 million people in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and blockade and isolate another 2 million or so in Gaza. All while not working towards any meaningful prospect of self-determination.

And then Hamas struck on 7 October, and the plan to create a new Middle East over the Palestinians’ heads fell apart completely. The arrangement could not withstand an attack on Israel that triggered a bloody response from the Israeli government both in Gaza and the West Bank, and revealed to the world the ruthlessness and impunity of the Israeli regime...

Read more: War in Iran, chaos in the Gulf, repression in the west: and the thread that binds them all is Palestine

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OTHERWISE OCCUPIED - ISRAEL HAS BECOME DANGEROUS FOR JEWS AROUND THE WORLD

Source: Haaretz
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2026-03-17/ty-article-opinion/israel-has-become-dangerous-for-jews-around-the-world/0000019c-f638-d938-a9fd-fe39928d0000

By Amira Hass
Published March 17, 2026

From Amsterdam to Detroit, attacks on synagogues show how Israel's wars and rhetoric are spilling over onto Diaspora communities

Police outside a Jewish school following an explosion that caused minor damage, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, March 14, 2026. Credit: Piroschka Van De Wouw/Reuters

Have the three of them ever called on the Israel Police to act against"radical Judaism” that ignites daily, non-symbolic pogroms in the West Bank?

Of course not.

They and other Israeli representatives who rush to scold Europeans and cry "antisemitism" over every piece of graffiti in a cemetery break records for hypocrisy and double standards.

So too do official Jewish leaderships in the Diaspora, who continue to support Israel no matter what and do not even publicly disavow the deadly violence of the settlers, which rages in the name of their God and history.

Israel is dangerous for Jews, precisely because it presents itself as the representative of the Jewish people across generations. When, together with the United States, it bombs Iran and crushes Lebanon, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes, Israel does so in the name of the Jewish people, not just in the name of its Jewish citizens.

As it continues a war of annihilation and revenge – now in its low intensity stage – against the Palestinian population, confined to 48 percent of the Gaza Strip, and after portraying Palestinians as a link in a historical chain of archenemies, it acts as an ambassador for Jews everywhere.

When it gives free rein to its settlers and its mista'arvim (undercover units whose members disguise themselves as Palestinians) to slay Palestinians, it envisions Diaspora Jews who will settle or, at the very least, invest their wealth in its territory. When Israel accelerates the expulsion of Palestinians from most of the West Bank into enclaves it has long planned, it does so with the thought of millions of Jews who may still be forced to flee and immigrate to it, God willing, when antisemitism increases.

From March 3 to 14, at least seven incidents of violence were reported against synagogues and an ultra-Orthodox Jewish school in Canada, Europe, and the United States; these did not result in fatalities. The choice of religious institutions as targets for explosives, even with a homemade device, reeks of antisemitism. These institutions are identified with a distinct group and therefore serve as clear and convenient targets for acts of violence. Most likely, if there had been casualties, they would have been Jews and clearly uninvolved.

An attack on a synagogue, even if initially intended to be symbolic, signals a desire to instill fear and harm Jews elsewhere. An attack on a synagogue in the Diaspora, in particular, is the mirror image of Israel's claim to represent every Jew and is therefore extremely foolish. It could encourage people to immigrate to the land between the sea and the river, the opposite of what serves the Palestinian interest...

Read more: Otherwise Occupied - Israel Has Become Dangerous for Jews Around the World