Spain, Ireland and Slovenia have mounted a renewed push to suspend the European Union’s trade and cooperation pact with Israel at a meeting of EU foreign ministers before being shot down by Germany and Italy, which vetoed the move.

Despite growing calls to hold the Israeli government accountable for its actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, Europe is deeply divided over its approach to Israel.

“Today, Europe’s credibility is at stake,” Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares told reporters before Tuesday’s meeting in Luxembourg. “I expect every European country to uphold what the International Court of Justice and the UN say on human rights and the defence of international law. Anything different would be a defeat for the European Union.”

But German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul called Spain’s request “inappropriate”, saying any issues should instead be discussed in a “critical, constructive dialogue with Israel”.

European diplomats and human rights organisations said a number of factors are behind the current disquiet over Israel within Europe.

The main one is the genocidal war on Gaza, in which more than 72,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023 while thousands more are missing and feared dead under the rubble. Israel has destroyed most of Gaza’s infrastructure, and a genocide case has been brought against it before the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Meanwhile, there has been an unprecedented expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are built on Palestinian land and violate international law.

More recently, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition government has succeeded in passing a death penalty law that in practice applies only to Palestinians and is engaged in a legal and political campaign to restrict European funding for Israeli and Palestinian nongovernmental organisations that document human rights abuses.

An obvious target

One obvious target for those opposed to Israel’s actions is the EU-Israel Association Agreement, which came into force in 2000. This is the legal framework for political, economic and cultural relations between the EU and Israel. It grants Israel highly lucrative privileges, including preferential access to the vast European market with low tariffs on industrial and other goods.

The pact contains a strict human rights clause, however. Article 2 states that relations must be based on respect for human rights and democratic principles – and this is what has attracted the attention of activists.

Hosni Abidi, a professor of international relations at the University of Geneva, noted that civil society is already mobilising around this clause.

“More than 1 million signatures from European citizens have reached the European Commission demanding the suspension of the agreement,” Abidi told Al Jazeera, adding that Israel is in clear breach of the pact’s foundational text.

Targeting Israel through its trade agreements could be a powerful move, analysts said, because the economic leverage the EU holds over Israel is unparalleled. The bloc is Israel’s biggest trading partner, far surpassing the United States in terms of bilateral goods exchanges.

According to EU data, trade in goods between the bloc and Israel amounted to 42.6 billion euros ($45.3bn) in 2024. A partial suspension of the EU-Israel agreement could directly impact about 5.8 billion euros ($6.1bn) worth of Israeli exports.

Beyond trade, the pact is also vital to sustaining Israel’s technological edge. Mohanad Mustafa, an academic and expert on Israeli affairs, pointed out that Israeli scientific research relies almost entirely on EU funding.

“Without European support, scientific research and development in Israel would collapse completely,” he told Al Jazeera.

Conflicting histories, conflicting ideologies

The primary obstacle to suspending this agreement lies in the EU’s complex voting mechanisms and the deep internal divisions over Israel that are rooted in different national histories.

A full suspension would require a unanimous decision from all 27 member states, which is currently impossible. Suspending only the lucrative commercial arrangements requires a “qualified majority” of at least 15 EU countries, representing 65 percent of the EU population. This gives heavily populated nations like Germany what amounts to a veto.

Scott Lucas, a professor of international relations at the University of Birmingham, explained that Europe does not have a single political culture.

“Germany, for example, cannot turn its back on Israel because of the history of the Second World War and the Holocaust. That culture is deeply embedded in the German mindset,” Lucas said. Conversely, he noted, nations like Ireland view the Palestinian struggle through the lens of their own history with British colonialism, fostering deep sympathy for Palestinians.

Israel has also systematically cultivated relationships with Europe’s far-right, populist governments, such as in Hungary, to ensure protection from any sort of EU sanctions.

“Israel’s strategic allies in Europe are the extreme right-wing populists who are fundamentally anti-Muslim and, in their roots, even anti-Semitic,” Mustafa explained. “Yet Israel connects with them simply because they support the colonial project in the West Bank.”

Netanyahu’s government has adopted an aggressive posture towards those European nations demanding accountability for Israel, routinely levelling accusations of anti-Semitism against their leaders, analysts said.

However, Mustafa noted that while Israel feels secure that governments like Germany will block immediate top-down sanctions, it is deeply unsettled by the shifting tide. “What disturbs Israel is the destruction of its ‘victim narrative’ within European societies,” he said.

A historic shift from the bottom up?

While a formal suspension of the association agreement by the entire bloc appears out of reach for now, the push towards accountability for Israel signifies a historic shift within Europe, observers said. Indeed, alternative, targeted measures are already taking shape.

These include states taking action unilaterally when they do not need EU consensus. Italy, for instance, has already suspended its joint defence pact with Israel.

Meanwhile, Sweden and France are leading a push to raise tariffs on goods produced in Israeli settlements. European universities, businesses and cultural institutions are increasingly severing ties with their Israeli counterparts independently as well.

Ultimately, frustration over the EU’s bureaucratic paralysis in relation to Israel “will fuel a bottom-up approach”, Lucas said.

As the death toll in Gaza continues to mount despite a more than six-month “ceasefire”, pressure on Brussels to take some sort of action is unlikely to let up, leaving the bloc to grapple with a stark contradiction between its stated human rights values and its deeply entrenched trade interests, observers said.