The EU has corroborated UN allegations that Israel was guilty of "indiscriminate attacks ... starvation ... torture ... [and] apartheid" against Palestinians in a leaked "review".
The "restricted", eight-page EU foreign service document was circulated to member states' embassies in Brussels on Friday (20 June) and leaked in full (see below) for the first time by EUobserver.
It concluded, on page eight, that "there are indications that Israel would be in breach of its human rights obligations" in a 25-year-old EU-Israel "association agreement", which could cost Israel €1bn/year in trade perks - if member states were to take action.
The leaked EU paper was bracketed with assorted caveats.
It was billed merely as a "note" to "contribute to the ongoing review" of EU-Israel relations, rather than as the last word on the subject.
It didn't entail "any value judgment" by EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas or EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.
It apologised for excluding violence by Palestinian militant group Hamas, but said this lay outside its scope.
And it was chiefly based on findings by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague - because Israel had allowed the EU "no capacity" to do its own investigations in Gaza, the Kallas report said.
But it referenced chapter and verse of the laws of modern warfare.
And it chronicled a litany of Israeli violations, lending EU weight to the factuality of the UN findings, and conjuring horrific images of events on the ground.
Israel's food blockade meant "half a million people (one in five)" in Gaza were "facing starvation", the Kallas report said.
"The blockade and siege of Gaza by Israel amounts to collective punishment ... and may also amount to the use of starvation as a method of war", it added.
Israel was "in violation of an ICJ provisional ruling" designed to "prevent the commission of acts within the scope of the genocide convention", the EU review noted, in its only use of the word "genocide".
It spoke of "indiscriminate [Israeli] attacks" using "heavy weapons, including air-dropped bombs, on places were civilians are sheltering".
Victims included babies, infants, and disabled people.
"Palestinian journalists and media workers have been reportedly killed in large numbers, possibly as a result of being directly targeted," the EU foreign service paper said.
And this was likely a "deliberate attempt by Israel to limit the flow of information to and from Gaza and prevent reporting on the impact of its attacks", the EU document said.
Turning to Israeli aggression in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the EU referenced ICJ reports of Israeli "racial segregation and apartheid".
Israeli arrests of Palestinians "often involved violence, humiliation, and inhuman and degrading treatment, in some cases amounting to torture", the Kallas review said.
"The leaked EEAS [EU External Action Service] paper makes it abundantly clear that EU institutions know very well what's happening in Gaza ... and that they don't deny it, or seek to justify it in some bizarre fashion," said H.A. Hellyer, from the London-based think-tank, the Royal United Services Institute.
"If the EU doesn't act on the conclusions in this paper, then its credibility will be incredibly damaged," he said, as EU ambassadors, foreign ministers, and leaders prepared to discuss follow-ups in Brussels this week.
A previous EU foreign service report on Israel, carried out last November, also spoke of Israeli "war crimes", but prompted no sanctions.
And draft conclusions for next Thursday's EU summit, also seen by EUobserver, left open what EU leaders planned to say on the Kallas paper, meaning they might passively "take note" that it was filed, instead of more boldly endorsing her conclusions.
The draft summit declaration said, low down in point 17, only: "[p.m.: review of Israel's fulfilment of its obligations under Article 2 of the Association Agreement]".
Meanwhile, even if the EU foreign service didn't have staff in Gaza, the EU did have diplomats and officials in Egypt, Israel, and the West Bank, said Claudio Francavilla from the Human Rights Watch (HRW) group in New York.
"They've seen, with their own eyes, food trucks rotting because of the Israeli blockade, so they don't need to rely on the UN to bear witness to that," he said.
"The evidence was so overwhelming that they [EU institutions] had no choice but to acknowledge reality: Israel is in massive breach of Article 2 [on human rights compliance in its EU pact]. EU foreign ministers must act accordingly on Monday [23 June] and suspend the association agreement," Francavilla said.
But the caveats and "pathetic phrasing of the [Kallas] conclusions ... reflect political discomfort and cowardice in certain powerful corners of the EU," he added.
Tom Gibson, from the Committee to Protect Journalists, also in New York, said: "EU foreign ministers need to act and suspend it [the Israel agreement]. The message must be clear: Israel must be held to account. Anything less is a disgrace".
The Israeli embassy to the EU declined to comment.
EUobserver is a member-supported publication – please consider a membership to ensure we can keep doing important reporting.
Andrew Rettman is EUobserver's foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.
Andrew Rettman is EUobserver's foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.