The European Union and Palestine: Complicity, Silence and Double Standards

EU’s humanitarian posturing when it comes to Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza masks deeper political, economic and military complicity. The talk focuses on the EU’s policies towards Palestine and Israel before 2023 and it then interrogates more recent debates over the EU-Israel Association Agreement and also the largely symbolic recognition of Palestine by some EU member states. These policies underscore the EU’s colonial entanglements and selective solidarities. Such contradictions lay bare not only a crisis of credibility, human rights and international law but also the erosion of the EU’s role in global politics.

A lecture by Dimitris Bouris, an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. After completing his PhD at the University of Warwirck, he was a Research Fellow at the European Neighbourhood Policy Chair at the College of Europe (Natolin). He has also worked as a visiting lecturer at Kingston University in the course on Middle East Politics. Among other positions, he has been director and coordinator of the EUMENIA (EU-Middle East Network in Action) project, Academic Board member of the Amsterdam Centre for Middle Eastern Studies, and Associate Editor of the academic journal European Security. During these years, he has also been invited to several diplomatic initiatives promoted by the OSCE and the EEAS.
His extensive work includes: The European Union and Occupied Palestinian Territories: State-building without a State (Routledge, 2014); the co-editor with Tobias Schumacher of the Revised European Neighbourhood Policy: Continuity and Change in EU Foreign Policy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); and his participation in Routledge Handbook of EU-Middle East Relations (Routledge, 2022).

Within the framework of the Aula Mediterrània lecture series. Co-organised with IBEI Master's Degrees.

Moderated by Elisabeth Johansson-Nogués, Associate Professor and Jean Monnet Chair, IBEI.

www.iemed.org/aulamediterrania