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EU admits to ‘double standards’ towards Ukraine, Palestine, says that’s just international relations

Friday, 12 August 2022 2:26 PM [ Last Update: Friday, 12 August 2022 2:26 PM ]

Friends react as they gather around the body Palestinian child Lian al-Shaer, after she succumbed to her injuries sustained in last week’s Israeli airstrikes, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, on August 11, 2022. (Photo by AFP)

The European Union’s foreign policy chief has admitted that the 27-nation bloc applies double standards when it comes to the wars in Ukraine and Israeli-occupied Palestine but says double standards permeate international relations anyway.

Josep Borrell made the remarks during an interview with El Pais newspaper released on Thursday, when asked why Brussels is so much more willing to support the people of Ukraine than the people of Gaza.

“We are often criticized for double standards. But international politics is to a large degree about applying double standards. We do not use the same criteria for all problems,” he said.

Borrell also suggested that the United States was to blame for a lack of resolution to what he called the Middle East conflict.

“There is no solution to the Middle East conflict without a very strong commitment on the part of the US,” he said, adding that many attempts have been made but at the moment there appears to be no path forwards.

Western countries pledge over $1.55 bln in aid to Ukraine military

Western countries have pledged over $1.55 billion in assistance to the Ukraine military.

In hypocritical remarks earlier in the interview, Borrell had said that supporting Kiev against Moscow’s military attacks was a “moral imperative” for Western nations.

“Resolving the situation with those people trapped in an open-air prison, which Gaza is, is not in the hands of the EU,” the diplomat said. He called the miserable conditions of life in Gaza “scandalous” and “a shame,” but would not be drawn on the origins of the humanitarian crisis.

The United States has always been one of the main supporters of the Israeli regime and its violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Critics believe both the US and major European powers apply double standards towards different nations, including the people of Ukraine and Palestine.

Last Friday, Israel launched a devastating military onslaught against the besieged Gaza Strip, killing dozens of civilians, including at least 17 children, and injuring hundreds more during airstrikes that lasted for three consecutive days.

The occupying regime in Tel Aviv brought the entire enclave under land, aerial, and naval blockade in June 2007.

As many as 1.3 million out of the 2.1 million Palestinians in Gaza (62 percent) require food assistance as well, according to the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Human rights activists have slammed the international community’s failure to take an action aimed at ending Israeli violations against the besieged territory, emphasizing that “Gazans’ silence will not last forever.”

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