The EU diplomatic service has confirmed that British company Page Protective Services (PPS) will guard its people in Gaza and the West Bank despite the firm's poor track record. A note published on the EU's Tenders ...

“As you can see, I have no electricity at home at this moment,” says Yousef via Skype. “I have a fuel generator that I can use during the power cuts. If I run out of fuel, like now, I have a transformer connected to a ...

France and the Netherlands have joined an initiative by 13 EU states to help European consumers boycott goods made by Israeli settlers on Palestinian land. Foreign ministers from the group - which also includes Austria, ...

Catherine Ashton's EU foreign service recently gave its biggest security contract to a company with a frightening track record. Then they took it away again, posing questions on the professionalism of her staff. Ashton' ...

I vividly remember two years ago, in April 2011, when the World Bank (WB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU) were sending the message that Palestinians are ready ...

Israeli President Shimon Peres has urged the EU to get behind his novel idea on how to stop the war in Syria - by sending in Arab peacekeepers under a UN mandate. Speaking to press in the European Parliament in ...

Israeli President Shimon Peres has urged the EU to put Hezbollah on its list of terrorist organisations, claiming that failure to do so would be an indication that the EU was prepared to tolerate its actions. Speaking ...

Senior EU diplomats have called for financial sanctions and travel bans on Israeli settlers in what they describe as a last-ditch effort to save the Middle East peace process. An internal report by EU countries' consuls ...

What further evidence does the European Union need to declare Hezbollah an international terrorist group? The latest proof comes from Bulgaria. After a six month investigation, Bulgaria has concluded in a new report ...

The efforts of one Palestinian man to get to his scholarship at a European university show how cut off Gaza is from the normal world. Twenty-four-year-old Maysara al-Arabeed left Gaza for the first time in his life on ...

Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu has mocked EU foreign ministers' "dismay" over his plan to split Palestine in three and to take away its capital. The right-wing politician on Monday (10 December) told press in ...

A joint German-Israeli government meeting in Berlin on Thursday (6 December) is likely to be the scene of more disagreements between Chancellor Angela Merkel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the two traditional ...

Israel last month showed off the accuracy of its weapons by bombing a football stadium in Gaza. But civilian deaths and settlement expansion have caused diplomatic defeats. At about 9am local time on 17 November an ...

The Prime Minister of Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, has appealed to the EU to take his political and militant group, Hamas, off its terrorist register. Speaking to a delegation of visiting parliamenterians from Poland, Portugal ...

Just one EU country - the Czech Republic - voted against Palestine's bid to become a UN "observer state" on Thursday (29 November). Fourteen others - Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, ...

The Palestinians are about to compound their 1947 UN blunder with yet another misstep at the world body. No EU country should be complicit in this mistake. The war between Hamas and Israel has barely ended, but the ...

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' decision to ask UN members in New York on 29 November to grant Palestine the status of a UN "observer state" has prompted intense debate in Europe, both at government level and in ...

An EU declaration to be published on the day of a historic UN vote on Palestine does little to hide internal division on the subject. The statement - a draft of which was seen by EUobserver - repeats the Union's ...

France has said it will vote Yes in a UN vote on making Palestine into an "observer state," but the UK will only back the move with strings attached. French foreign minister Laurent Fabius told parliament on Tuesday (27 ...

The world's top military powers and Iran aim to restart talks on nuclear proliferation in December or January. The negotiators - led by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Iranian diplomat Saeed Jalili - last ...

EU and US statements after one week of Gaza hostilities have underlined the new status of the Muslim Brotherhood in the region. British foreign minister William Hague and French President Francois Hollande - speaking ...

Two leading EU countries have urged Israel not to launch ground operations in Gaza. Speaking ahead of a foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels on Monday (19 November), the UK's Wiliam Hague told Sky news on Sunday that ...

Both sides in the new Gaza conflict are competing for international sympathy as fighting escalates. Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev told EUobserver on Thursday (15 November) morning that Prime Minister Benjamin ...

Palestine can count on about 12 Yes votes by EU countries when it tries to upgrade its UN status, in a move expected later this month. EU foreign affairs spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic told EUobserver on Thursday (8 ...

A coalition of 22 NGOs fronted by a former EU commissioner has highlighted the scope of European trade with illegal Israeli settlements. Its report, out on Tuesday (30 October), cited World Bank figures that EU ...

MEPs have rubber-stamped a trade deal with Israel despite a warning by their own legal services that it might clash with EU law. The European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday (23 October) passed the so-called Acaa ( ...

Israel has told the EU to fix its crisis instead of interfering in settlement expansion. Its foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, made the comments in a statement on Saturday (20 October) in reaction to a previous EU ...

EU ministers in New York have said new sanctions on Iran are the antidote to an Iran-Israel war. Speaking to press in the margins of the UN's annual meeting, the foreign ministers of France, Germany and the UK said the ...

MEPs have set the scene for an ill-tempered debate on Israeli settlements after the trade committee narrowly endorsed removing trade barriers for Israeli medical products. Centre-right deputies in the EPP group on ...

Denmark is fronting an EU initiative to help consumers boycott Israeli settlement products. Its foreign ministry is funding an event in Brussels on 23 October to get EU diplomats and NGOs, such as Oxfam and Crisis ...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told Italy's foreign minister the EU should designate Hezbollah as a terrorist entity. But EU diplomats are wary of the move. "There is one ... effort that I think Europe ...

One of the core obstacles to peace in the Middle East has always been the refusal of sections of the Arab world to accept the legitimacy and sovereignty of the State of Israel, since its very inception in 1948. Sadly, ...

Israel has complained about the EU's inclusion of parts of the town of Modi'in-Maccabim-Reut on a blacklist of "settlements." The European Commission on 3 August added three postal codes in the town to a register of ...

The EU is today to confirm moves to strengthen economic ties with Israel, facing off criticism that trade conditions should be frozen due to the diplomatic impasse over Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. ...

European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso has pledged support for a future Palestinian state on his first official trip to the region. Speaking alongside Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in Ramallah on Sunday ...

European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso goes on his first official visit to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories next week, in a three-day-long peregrination from Sunday (8 July) to Tuesday. His ...

Seen through a Brussels-based prism, it is easy to forget just how far to the east Cyprus is. Lebanon, Syria and Israel are all within a couple of hundred kilometres. To its north is Turkey, to its south Egypt. To fit ...

Catherine Ashton's foreign service has built a situation room for the Arab League in Cairo to help handle future crises. Agostino Miozzo, Ashton's top official on civilian crisis response, told EUobserver on Monday (25 ...

EU foreign ministers recently said that ending the Middle East conflict was a fundamental interest of the European Union. If this is indeed the case, Europe should pay much more attention to what is happening in the ...

A former Israeli intelligence chief has said EU and Nato countries can do more on Syria than complaining about Russia or imposing sanctions. The contact, who asked not to be named, spoke to diplomats and press in the EU ...

EU diplomats disagree with the US and Israel on whether Iran should join a Contact Group on Syria. UN emissary Kofi Annan last week called for the formation of a body akin to the one which steered events in the Balkans ...

Leaked letters show that EU mediation on Iran's nuclear programme is being bedevilled by time-wasting. EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton is trying to organise a new round of talks on Iran in Moscow in her role ...

Few issues of diplomatic conversation today have quite the same ability to generate a rolling of the eyes and turning of the page as the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Stuck is an understatement. Israel’s government ...

EU foreign ministers have "warned" Israel they will take a tougher approach to exports originating in illegal settlements on Palestinian land. The ministers in a statement on Monday (14 May) detailing Israel's long-term ...

If or when a full-blown conflict erupts between Armenia and Azerbaijan, it will probably begin like this. According to a senior source in the Armenian defence ministry, on 27 April Azerbaijani troops sneaked over the ...

NGOs have highlighted Israel's ongoing campaign to ethnically cleanse occupied territories as EU ministers meet in Brussels to discuss the problem. Data compiled by the European Commission, the UN and local activists ...

The European External Action Service (EEAS) has awarded a juicy contract to British security firm G4S in Libya despite the fact it has no permission to work there. The €10 million contract covers bodyguards and building ...

The EU's joint police body, Europol has noted there were no succesful Islamist attacks in Europe last year, while warning about future Toulouse-type 'lone wolves.' Its report, out on Wednesday (25April), highlighted ...

As the EU stops sales of perfume and truffles to Syria, one officer in the Free Syrian Army (FSA) wonders why it is doing so little to really help. EU ministers imposed the ban on luxury goods at a meeting in Luxembourg ...