EU review ‘paints grim picture' of Israel's actions in Gaza, Irish premier says

The Taoiseach said the report highlights the restriction of food and medicines into Gaza, which he said 'amounts to the use of starvation as a method of war'.
The EU-Israel Association Agreement is being reviewed after a dozen EU member states backed it last month.
The unpublished report has found that there are 'indications' Israel could be in breach of its human rights obligations under the agreement, according to several media outlets.
Reacting on Saturday, Mr Martin welcomed the 'substantive and important' report on Israel's compliance with its human rights obligations under the EU-Israel deal.
He said Ireland had 'long argued' that clauses on human rights in the EU's international agreement 'have to be respected' and should prompt 'serious consequences' when they are not.
Back in February 2024, Ireland and Spain jointly called for an urgent review of whether Israel had breached its human rights obligations in the trade agreement.
A majority of EU countries did not back the review until last month, prompted by a proposal from The Netherlands.
The shift came amid Israel's months-long blockade of Gaza, which has accelerated fears of a famine. A new Israeli and US-backed aid system has been marred by violence.
Israel's 20-month military campaign in the the Palestinian enclave has killed an estimated 55,000 people and injured thousands more, according to Gaza's health ministry.
Mr Martin said: 'I very much welcome the substantive and important report of the EU's High Representative for Human Rights on Israel's compliance with its human rights obligations under the EU-Israel Association Agreement.
'Bringing together the reports and analysis of serious, credible and reliable sources – including the International Court of Justice, the UN's Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Secretary General's Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict and others – it paints a clear and grim picture of a sustained and deliberate failure by Israel to adhere to its international obligations, especially in Gaza but also in the West Bank.
'It highlights a continued restriction of food, medicines, medical equipment, and other vital supplies into Gaza that amount to collective punishment of the civilian population, that amounts to the use of starvation as a method of war.
'It describes an unprecedented level of killing and injury of civilians in Gaza resulting from indiscriminate attacks without proportion or precaution, as well as attacks on hospitals, forced mass displacements and the killing of journalists. All of this with a persistent lack of accountability.
'In the West Bank, it reports sustained oppression of the Palestinian population, including through state and settler violence, the appropriation of land, and the use of detention as a form of collective punishment.'
He added: 'We will now work with partners to follow up on this important report with concrete steps, and I will be discussing it with my colleagues in the European Council when we meet next week.'

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Daily Mail​

19 minutes ago

• Daily Mail​

'Defiant' Israelis show little sign of backing down against Iran - but as the country continues to pay the price for its resilience, its citizens ask 'We're doing the world's dirty work, so why can't you British give us some moral support?'

The building has not so much blown up as imploded. Thickets of metal protrude from what was once the roof of this apartment block. It's as if a vengeful god has reached down from the heavens and yanked out its steel entrails. Next to it a skyscraper stands scorched, its side mottled with soot. The asphalt on the street below is torn, gaping open like a wound. Nearby, a carpet of shattered glass glints in the morning light. I'm in Ramat Gan in central Tel Aviv, where an Iranian missile attack has just struck several residential buildings. Emergency services have cordoned off the impact site. Police warn curious onlookers to watch their step, as throngs of gathered Press push against the makeshift barriers. One cheeky TV crew tries to scoot around them and is gently pushed back. Just hours earlier, I was awoken in my hotel room by an air-raid siren sounding across the city. An automated Hebrew voice then wafted into my room: get to an air-raid shelter – fast. A couple of soft thuds later, I understood that the city had just been hit. Israel may indeed have mastery of Iran's skies. It may be deploying its air defences highly effectively. But Iranian missiles are nonetheless getting through, and they are striking the heart of Israel's premier city. One thing is clear to me: this war is far from over. Israelis understand this. And, for the moment, they are united behind their government. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains controversial (and loathed by many), but for now the consensus is that resolving the country's domestic politics can wait. It's time to deal with Iran – once and for all. The Israelis have had enough. And I don't blame them. I have studied the drama of the Islamic Republic of Iran's nuclear programme, and by extension the Iran-Israel conflict, for almost 20 years. Iran's war on Israel has been relentless. The mullahs declared a proxy war against the state of Israel in 1991. Ironically, this came after Israel had quietly sold them weapons during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. Jerusalem was desperate to rekindle relations with the state it had been allies with under the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, before he was ousted in the Islamic Revolution of 1979. It got a de facto declaration of war in response. Since then, the Iranians have expanded their malignant influence into Syria, Lebanon and Gaza to create what they call a 'ring of fire' around Israel – to scorch and burn the Jewish state at every opportunity. It's been effective. Even before the horrors of October 7, Iranian-backed proxies had killed and wounded thousands of Israelis. Shortly after I left the crash site, I spoke to Dr Meir Javedanfar, who teaches Iranian politics at Reichman University, on the Mail's weekly global news podcast, Apocalypse Now. Like so many Israelis, he looked tired, the result of sleep deprivation following repeated night-time missile attacks. Javedanfar was born in Tehran, and he explained proudly to me: 'Bar Mitzvah'd in Tehran, too!' Like so many others, including myself, he once thought that some type of reform could come to the Islamic Republic. But, like me, he saw that everyone who ever tried to bring reform was bypassed, imprisoned, tortured or killed. The Iranians have not let up against Israel, even for a moment. In a statement two days after October 7, Ayatollah Khamenei said that, while Iran was not involved in the Hamas massacre, the 'hands and forehead of its planners must be kissed'. Like so many Israelis, Javedanfar has had enough. 'From now on, Israel refuses to live with a regime that sponsors terror organisations who kill our civilians,' he told me. 'The Iranian regime wants Israel dead. It wants Israeli citizens dead. It denies the Holocaust. It is so depraved that it has Holocaust cartoon competitions. 'No Israeli government is willing to live with this any more. And so, on June 13 we acted – with amazing success, which was no surprise. Special operations are to Israel what watches are to Switzerland. Our expertise.' Make no mistake, the war is tough on the people here. As I walk through the streets, the normally bustling city is quiet, bereft of traffic. I stroll along the promenade on Frishman Beach. Normally I'd eat at Greko, a Greek restaurant overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. But it's boarded up. Matthew Morgenstern, Professor of Aramaic at Tel Aviv University, sets out what Israelis are facing now. 'Starting with Gulf War One in 1991, I've been through almost 35 years of wars here. But I've never experienced anything like this. Every single day, hundreds of people on the home front have lost their homes. 'It seems that they only need to get one missile through a day and the damage is done. I've been calling this 'Iranian Roulette' – will we be the ones to be hit this time?' The mullahs are hoping that these attacks will force the Israeli government into abandoning the fight. I'm sceptical. Throughout the day I trade messages and calls with a former defence official still in regular contact with the government and the security services. He sums up the mood here. 'The people of Israel are incredibly determined and defiant,' he tells me. 'Despite the awful price we are paying personally, physically, emotionally, there is still wall-to-wall support for this operation. Netanyahu is not a popular prime minister here. But after almost two years of fighting wars against Islamic death cults on seven fronts, all backed by Iran, the people of Israel are saying enough is enough.' I feel that sentiment all around me. It hangs in the air like the salt I smell drifting over from the Mediterranean Sea. Two events over the past week have hardened resolve yet further. The first is the killing of a seven-year-old Ukrainian girl, Nastya Buryk , and her family in an Iranian strike on the coastal town of Bat Yam. Nastya had come to Israel from Odesa for cancer treatment along with her grandmother Lena and two cousins, Konstantin, nine, and Ilya, 13, all of whom were killed alongside her. Her mother Maria is still beneath the rubble. The second is Thursday's missile attack on Soroka Hospital, in the southern city of Be'er Sheva, which serves the entire Negev region, not least the many Palestinians who go especially to be treated there. According to Israel's ministry of health, 71 people have been injured. The people are enraged. But they also know this cannot last for ever. And there is one question that naturally comes to the Israeli mind: will the Americans get involved? Well, the Israelis are certainly keen that they do. 'This is Trump's Churchillian moment,' the former Israeli defence official tells me. 'He has the opportunity, with a day or two's work, to strike at the heart of the worst and most destabilising regime since the end of the Second World War. 'You don't want the world's most dangerous weapons in the hands of the world's most dangerous regime. 'Israel has already done most of the work. Trump can and must finish the job.' Trump can indeed finish the job. As John Spencer, Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern Institute at West Point, told me on my podcast, the US has 'one of the quickest solutions to the remaining nuclear sites. The massive ordnance penetrator, the GBU-57 – a 30,000lb bunker-busting munition that can penetrate 200ft into concrete and reinforced steel.' Moreover, as Spencer also pointed out, it can only be deployed by the US B-2 bomber. 'This is really the only military solution, and only an American bomb dropped from an American plane can deliver it,' he said. But is it certain to destroy nuclear facilities buried deep in the mountains? And will Donald Trump sanction its use? So far the signs are mixed. Trump has been deploying the plural pronoun on social media, claiming 'we' – rather than Israel alone – have achieved extraordinary feats against the mullahs. Trump remains wary of war. But, clearly, the urge to claim credit for what is – so far – an extraordinary military operation is pressing on him. He's given the ayatollahs two weeks to make a deal. This is probably no surprise. If there's one thing Donald Trump enjoys more than making a deal, it's making a deal when the other side is so desperate he can put them over a barrel. He's betting that the mullahs, getting smashed up daily by Israel, need respite. He's betting that he can exploit this fact to demand terms so tough that Iran's path to a nuclear bomb is blocked, at least for now. But Iran's leadership also have a say. And they run a dictatorship, not a democracy. Concede too much and they risk emboldening enemies, not least their own people. For a regime built on projecting strength and fear, humiliation is fatal. If the mullahs refuse to fold, Trump may well decide to step in at the final moment and then take the credit. If the Israelis are defiant, they are also confused. In going after Iran's nuclear programme, they are doing the world a service. 'We are happy to take them out ourselves,' a friend told me as we drank smoothies in a cafe just off Dizengoff in central Tel Aviv. 'But why can't you just give us your moral support? We're doing this for everyone.' She's right. As German Chancellor Friedrich Merz recently observed: 'This is the dirty work that Israel is doing for all of us.' And yet, it seems we struggle to acknowledge even that. From our own government we hear the usual cringeworthy calls for calm and 'de-escalation'. Don't they understand how ridiculous they sound? If Britain, with all its history and expertise and capabilities, has truly given up on trying to influence world events then it's better to just say nothing. Now is not the time to back down. The question is simple. What would we in Britain do if a country had for decades promised to wipe us off the face of the Earth? What would we do if that country paid for proxy groups to launch thousands of rockets over decades at our towns and cities – at our children? If it provided the funding and training for the biggest massacre of British people since the Second World War? What would we in Britain demand that our government do? The answer is unequivocal: bring that regime to an end. The Israelis are just trying to take out Iran's nuclear programme – to everyone's benefit.

Times

28 minutes ago

• Times

How Israel could go it alone without US bunker buster bombs

The United States appears to have sent two B-2 stealth bombers to a military base in the Indian Ocean. The decision to send the warplanes, shortly after sending the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier to the region, could be a last minute negotiating tactic or a prelude to war. The bombers, which were probably making their way to Guam or the Diego Garcia military base, are equipped with the capability to use 'bunker buster' bombs which could offer the best chance of taking out Iran's Fordow nuclear facility. However, President Trump is still uncommitted for the time being to offensive action and is talking up diplomacy. If the president is unwilling to use his assets in the region to attack Iran, the question arises of how far the Israelis might be able to go on their own. Several targets, including the heavy-water reactor at Arak and the most important uranium enrichment plant, Natanz, have already been struck. The boss of the International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed that the centrifuges there were stopped so abruptly by airstrikes that they have been 'severely damaged if not destroyed altogether'. But other key sites are believed to remain intact, including the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Centre and the uranium enrichment plant deep underground at Fordow. The first of these (also a subterranean facility) is thought to have been the storage site for the 400-plus kilograms of uranium already enriched close to weapons grade. The second site is home to the most secure processing facilities available to the Islamic Republic. So, what are the other options? Expert opinion seems divided. Yoav Gallant, Israel's defence minister until last year, in an article in the Free Press co-authored with Sir Niall Ferguson, argued, 'only one air force has the power to finish off Fordow … only America can do this'. Gallant, however, like many on the Israeli side, wants to draw the Americans in, and US attacks on this and other deeply buried facilities might turn out to be more a question of delaying for longer than completely eliminating Iran's nuclear programme. Even if America does join in the assault, Fordow's centrifuges, shielded by 80-90 metres of rock, may prove invulnerable to its 'bunker buster' — the massive ordnance penetrator or GBU-57 bomb which is rated as effective down to 60m. Speaking on an Israeli podcast, Zohar Palti, Mossad's former analytical chief, said of Fordow: 'It would be better if the Americans strike there. They truly have the capacity to make the place 'evaporate', and I chose that word deliberately.' The phrasing was chilling, hinting that a tactical or low-yield nuclear weapon might be the only way to ensure its destruction. The idea of a nuclear weapon being used, something the White House would not rule out this week, seems like an extraordinary escalation but might be threatened at this stage as another attempt to intimidate Iran into making concessions. It's fascinating also that the Mossad veteran implied that a deep penetration unconventional weapon was a capability the US has, but not Israel. If President Trump's desire to avoid another Middle Eastern war means he sits this one out, it's possible the Israelis may have secretly produced a better penetrator weapon than its publicly acknowledged inventory suggests. There's also been some speculation — shades of blowing up the Death Star — that Fordow has an Achilles heel, a ventilation shaft that could provide a pathway for a bomb. But so far Israel has not attempted an assault on Fordow. David Albright, an American academic who's spent many years looking at Iranian nuclear sites, is one of those who's more upbeat about the chances of putting it out of action, saying 'Israel doesn't need the United States to come in with bunker busters and destroy it … Israel can do it on its own'. He argues that destroying generators, ventilation systems and so on at Fordow's other support plant could wreck the centrifuges inside in the same way that Natanz's were. It's noteworthy also that this week Israel bombed the factory where new enrichment machines are made. If all else fails, it's likely that the Israelis also have a plan to attack Fordow using ground forces. Their main airborne formation, the 98th Paratroopers Division, was withdrawn from Gaza earlier this month to be ready for action elsewhere. Israeli C-130 transport planes have also been seen over Syria, apparently on missions to or from Iran. There could be many reasons for those flights, for example to set up refuelling points for Israeli aircraft or ferry their forward air controllers to or from operations. But the suppression of Iran's air defences has been so extensive that it may soon be viable to mount the type of airlift needed to insert a force of several thousand troops to a forward mounting base near Fordow. It could be that a desire to retain the option of such a mission lies behind the fact that the tunnel entrances of the complex have not yet been attacked. They might need to be used by an assault force after all. This type of operation, though, would be fraught with difficulty — indeed in the view of Gallant and Ferguson it's 'not realistic'. There are thousands of Iranian troops deployed around the plant, so casualties could be high. Although the quantity of explosive needed to destroy it from the inside out might be a lot less than bombing it, it would remain considerable. While the Israelis are likely to have developed numerous plans, Iran may still hold some wild cards. 'All enriched materials have been transferred and are in secure locations,' Major General Mohsen Rezaie of the Revolutionary Guard Corps said earlier this week. He added: 'We will come out of this war with our hands full.' Many believe Iran has indeed dispersed its stockpile of highly enriched uranium from Isfahan to other sites too. A third uranium enrichment site at a secret location is believed to have been under preparation when the conflict started. What all the 'kinetic' options require — from GBU-57 bombs to ground forces — is an continuing onsite inspection regime to ensure that in the months or years to come Iran's nuclear project is not reconstituted. That might be necessary even in the 'regime change' scenario: note that international organisations are currently trying to secure the remnants of Syria's chemical arsenal. At talks with the UK, France, and Germany in Geneva on Friday, Iran showed both its willingness to engage on these issues but also its refusal to give up uranium enrichment. That's a longstanding position which is, so far, unchanged by the war. This refusal to bend may be sufficient for President Trump, mindful of the political divisions within his Maga movement, to say that a deal is impossible, despite his recent attempts to pressure Iran into one. His line last week — saying 'I may or may not' attack — may also simply have been stalling for time while final military deployments went ahead. Evidently Pentagon planners have wanted to head off various contingencies if, for example, Iran were to retaliate against their bases or diplomatic facilities in the region. But with the arrival of two stealth bombers, alongside two aircraft carriers and soon a number of F-22 stealth fighters and tanker planes, Trump will be able to deliver a final ultimatum to Iran. When that happens, the question of whether Israel can take out Fordow and other key facilities on its own may become academic.

The Guardian

38 minutes ago

• The Guardian

News live: nearly 4,000 Australians trying to evacuate Israel and Iran, Marles says; body found in search for missing man in NSW

Update: Date: 2025-06-21T22:49:34.000Z Title: Richard Marles Content: The defence minister, , is up on Sky News in the first of the Sunday morning political interviews. Marles has provided an update on the number of Australians attempting to leave Iran and Israel amid the latest conflict between the two nations. As of Sunday morning, he said there were 3800 Australian citizens - 2600 in Iran and 1200 in Israel - seeking government assistance to evacuate the countries. Marles said the government had a civilian charter plane on standby but it couldn't yet depart because the airspace over Iran and Israel remains closed. 'So we really are poised to provide whatever assistance we can in the event that airspace opens.' Update: Date: 2025-06-21T22:49:00.000Z Title: Good morning Content: Welcome to another Sunday morning Guardian live blog. The defence minister, Richard Marles, says nearly 4,000 Australians have applied for government assistance to leave Israel and Iran. Marles said the Australian government had a charter plan on standby to assist in an evacuation but it could not depart as the sky over Iran remains closed. New South Wales police have found the body of an 81-year-old man in the Moruya area after midnight on Saturday. Police found the body in a white ute after a search of the area but are not treating the death as suspicious at this stage. I'm Royce Kurmelovs and I'll be taking the blog through the day. With that, let's get started …