According to von der Leyen's statement, delivered during her State of the Union address in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, the EU will suspend all financial support to the State of Israel, with the exception of funding directed to civil society organizations and for Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial and research center.

Von der Leyen said she intends to push for a partial suspension of the Association Agreement, which grants Israel significant trade advantages with the EU. In addition, she plans to advance a ban on dealings with several ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government whom she labeled as extremists.

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The activists aboard reflect a deeply radical ideology. Hassan labeled Hamas' October 7 attack as "legitimate" and dismissed reports of the Bibas family's massacre; Yasemin Acar from Germany rejoiced during Iran's missile strike on Israel and shifted protest slogans from "destroy Hamas" to "destroy Zionism"; and Thiago Ávila from Brazil, who joined mourners at Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's funeral, hailed him as a "martyr and revered leader."

Israel Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Sunday, "I have instructed the IDF to act so that the Madleen flotilla does not reach Gaza. To the antisemitic Greta and her friends, I say clearly: You should turn back – because you will not reach Gaza."

This flotilla follows a failed attempt in May, when the ship Conscience was damaged near Malta. Organizers pointed to an Israeli drone attack, though Israel did not acknowledge responsibility. The IDF affirmed its readiness to ensure the current flotilla does not reach Gaza's shores.

Recently, Madleen, with Thunberg and 11 pro-Palestinian activists on board, veered off its Gaza trajectory to rescue migrants in the eastern Mediterranean after a distress signal from a boat carrying roughly 30-40 people. The activists accused Greece of drone surveillance on Israel's behalf, claiming it bolsters Israel's dominance in the eastern Mediterranean. They reported drones hovering 80 kilometers from Greece and urged supporters on social media to track the vessel live, asserting that public attention could thwart an Israeli move.

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Roberta Metsola has been reelected as president of the European Parliament, securing a second term at the helm of the EU's legislative body, Politico reports.

The Maltese politician, a member of the center-right European People's Party (EPP), garnered 562 votes from the newly elected 720-member parliament on Tuesday. Her victory ensures she will remain in the role for another two and a half years. Metsola's reelection was widely anticipated, as she ran virtually unopposed. The only other candidate, Irene Montero of The Left, Spain's former minister of equality, received 61 votes in what was seen as a symbolic challenge.

Heartfelt congratulations, dear @RobertaMetsola - our European Parliament President, the face of European democracy!

The fantastic support received for your re-election is a testament to your outstanding leadership.

Together, let's continue to bring Europe closer to people. pic.twitter.com/rVlfQOls34

— Manfred Weber (@ManfredWeber) July 16, 2024

 From Israel's perspective, the European Parliament, under the leadership of President Roberta Metsola, is generally expected to show understanding towards Israel in its war against the terrorist organization Hamas in Gaza. Metsola came to Israel on a solidarity visit immediately after the October 7 massacre and visited Kibbutz Kfar Aza along with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Afterward, Metsola traveled to Tel Aviv, where she experienced air raid sirens due to a missile attack on central Israel. At the end of the visit, both leaders laid a wreath at the memorial for terror victims in Tel Aviv.

About two weeks after October 7, Israel received exceptional support from the European Parliament under Metsola's presidency. With a majority of 500 members of parliament against only 21 opponents, a resolution was passed strongly condemning Hamas's deadly terror attack while supporting Israel's right to defend itself.

Congratulations, dear @RobertaMetsola, on your reelection as @EP_President

Fully deserved.

Your leadership and passion for Europe is more needed than ever. pic.twitter.com/iqnRm1Yntf

— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) July 16, 2024

In her acceptance speech, Metsola pledged "strong leadership" and vowed to continue advocating for the parliament's right to initiate legislation. "This must be a House that cannot be afraid to lead and change. I will never shy away from making the difficult decisions."

The European Parliament president addressed a range of issues in her speech, including migration, industrial policy, and civil liberties. She emphasized the ongoing importance of supporting Ukraine in its conflict with Russia, stating, "The Russian war of aggression remains at the top of our agenda." She was the first EU leader to visit Ukraine following Russia's invasion in 2022.

Metsola's reelection maintains the traditional power-sharing arrangement between the EPP and the center-left Socialists and Democrats (S&D) group. The five-year mandate for the presidency is typically split between these two major political blocs.

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Foreign Ministry Director-General Alon Ushpiz on Wednesday said, "It's time to stop Iran" at a meeting in Brussels with senior European Union officials according to a ministry statement.

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The comments come ahead of next week's quarterly meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors, the UN nuclear watchdog tasked with inspecting Iran's nuclear facilities.

According to the ministry statement, Ushpiz told the EU officials Iran was advancing toward nuclear weapons capabilities every day and that now is the time to stop Iran's nuclear program.

Talks in Vienna on reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal are set to resume on November 29 for the first time since late June, when negotiations were stalled with the election of hardliner Ebrahim Raisi to the role of president.

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Ushpiz is in Brussels to bolster diplomatic ties between Israel and the EU.

During the visit, he held high-level talks with European Foreign Service Secretary-General Stefano Sannino and met with European Parliament Secretary-General Klaus Welle.

The director-general also held talks with senior NATO officials and met with ambassadors of the 27 EU-member states.

This article was first published by i24NEWS.

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Britain has cut its funding of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees by just over 50% last week, according to a report in the UK daily The Guardian. Having invested some $57 million in UNRWA in 2020, this amounted to a contribution of $28 million in 2021.

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UNRWA Commissioner Philippe Lazzarini tied the move to criticism of the Palestinian Authority curriculum used by UNRA. "The organization is sometimes subjected to vicious political attack, usually through the lens of the curriculum," he said.

According to Lazzarini, the UK was the third-largest UNRWA donor in 2020.

He said UNRWA had started off 2021 with "critical vulnerabilities."

The move follows the UK's decision to end all funding of the Palestinian Authority's coffers last month.

The issue of UNRWA's curriculum was brought to the public agenda in January 2021 when the agency's head was forced to confirm the findings of a report by IMPACT-se in which the research and policy institute found learning materials with UNRWA branding were replete with hatred, antisemitism, incitement to jihad and violence and failed to include any promotion of peace and tolerance in complete violation of UN values.

Lazzarini admitted UNRWA had printed and taught "inappropriate" material that was "mistakenly" included in the curriculum in use during the pandemic.

In June, former Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the UK's Foreign Office James Duddridge confirmed UNRWA's curriculum continued to contain anti-Israel, antisemitic material, a situation he said was not acceptable to the parliament or the government.

Speaking before a congressional committee last June, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US was "determined that UNRWA pursue very necessary reforms in terms of some of the abuses of the system that have taken place in the past, particularly the challenge that we've seen in disseminating in its educational products antisemitic or anti-Israel information.

In April, the European Parliament became the first legislative body in the world to adopt a resolution formally condemning and demanding the "immediate removal" of content that incites to hatred in violence in UNRWA's curriculum." Canada and Australia also opened official investigations into UNRWA over the hatred and antisemitism espoused in the organization's textbooks this year.

According to IMPACT-se CEO Marcus Sheff, "Policymakers in the US and Europe are standing in line to condemn the hatred in Palestinian Authority textbooks used by UNRWA. The head of the organization Philippe Lazzarini stood before the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee in September and admitted antisemitism, intolerance, and the glorification of terrorism are part of the Palestinian Authority textbooks taught in UNRWA's schools.

"Of course, the obvious remedy would be to remove the hatred and create a curriculum of peace and tolerance instead of inciting and blaming others.  But it is unreasonable for change to happen when responsibility for this remains in UNRWA's hands. The agency's teachers themselves create content that is just as radical as that of the Palestinian Authority," he said.

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"This may happen ... You can be sure it's not going to be peaceful," Borrell told the European Parliament.

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toured the Jordan Valley on Monday and reiterated his pledge to apply Israeli law there and in other areas that have been designated under the newly unveiled White House peace plan.

"President Donald Trump said that he will recognize Israel's application of sovereignty [over the relevant areas], and he will do so once we finalize the processes that have already begun," Netanyahu said,

Borrell, who traveled to Washington last week, also reiterated his rejection of parts of Trump's peace plan.

"The proposals tabled two weeks ago clearly challenge the internationally agreed parameters. It is difficult to see how this initiative can bring both parties back to the table," Borrell said of Israel and the Palestinians.

"I made this point to my (US) interlocutors: We need to ask ourselves whether this plan provides a basis for progress or not."

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Borrell, 72, is set to replace Federica Mogherini, an unpopular figure in Israel due to her obstinate support for the Iran nuclear deal and her pro-Palestinian stance.

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Following the elections for European Parliament, which saw the right-wing bloc grow in power, Israel had hoped the EU's foreign policy would also take a rightward turn. However, the decision by European leaders to appoint Borrell foreign policy chief, along with other appointments, has made it clear the bloc will continue to support Iran and the Palestinians and maintain its contrarian stance toward the US and Israel.

While Borrell volunteered at a kibbutz and even met his first wife in Israel, he has long since been an outspoken critic of the country.

About a year ago, he proposed the EU and its member-states unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state. He has even threatened that Spain would make such a move on its own, although this has yet to happen.

Borrell lauded the Islamic Revolution in series of tweets marking 40 years to the event: "The literacy rate increased from 35% to 84%. Women's participation in the workforce increased from 5% to 47%.

"Iran is a key country in the Middle East. It is involved in wars in Syria and Yemen and is now in competition with Saudi Arabia. Forty years after [the] Vietnam [War], Iran is still an obsession for the US. Iran can survive the sanctions if [US President Donald] Trump is not re-elected. Otherwise, the regime will renew its nuclear program and double its regional aggression."

Asked in a newspaper interview about Iran's calls for Israel's destruction, Borrell replied, "Iran wants to wipe out Israel? There's nothing new here. We have to live with it."

It should be noted that Borrell's appointment requires European Parliament approval, and there is a small chance the body could vote against the move.

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Right-wing nationalists who want to slash immigration into Europe and return power to national governments are expected to make gains, though mainstream parties are tipped to hold onto power in the 751-seat legislature that sits in both Brussels and Strasbourg.

The election began on Thursday, but most of the EU's 28 member states, including the biggest of all, Germany and France, are voting on Sunday, and the results are expected overnight. Some 426 million people are eligible to vote.

"I don't want to see a right-populist Europe [that] wants to destroy the idea of togetherness," said Manfred Weber, the lead candidate of the Christian Democrat center-right EPP group, currently the biggest in the legislature.

Leading the challenge to the established order is Italy's hardline interior minister, Matteo Salvini, head of the League party, who is assembling a group of like-minded parties from across Europe.

"We need to do everything that is right to free this country, this continent, from the illegal occupation organized by Brussels," Salvini told a rally in Milan last weekend that was attended by the leaders of 11 nationalist parties.

As he voted in Budapest on Sunday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said he hopes the election will bring a shift toward political parties that want to stop migration.

The migration issue "will reorganize the political spectrum in the European Union," said Orban, who recently met with Salvini but has not yet committed to joining the Italian's group.

In the face of a more united hardline right wing in the parliament, traditional parties like the EPP and the center-left socialist S&D group want the mainstream to build a strong coalition to stave off the fringe parties.

Spanish caretaker Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called on "all the political forces to open a horizon of political stability."

Projections released by the European Parliament last month show the EPP bloc losing 37 of its 217 seats and the S&D group dropping from 186 seats to 149. On the far right flank, the Europe of Nations and Freedom group is predicted to increase its bloc from 37 to 62 seats.

Proponents of stronger EU integration, led by French President Emmanuel Macron , argue that issues like climate change and reining in immigration are simply too big for any one country to tackle alone.

Macron, whose country has been rocked in recent months by the populist yellow vest movement, has called the elections "the most important since 1979 because the [European] Union is facing an existential risk" from nationalists seeking to divide the bloc.

In Austria, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said Sunday that he hopes the elections will strengthen the center rather than parties on the far right and left.

Austria is one of the countries where the vote also has importance to national politics, serving as a first test of support ahead of a national election in September following the collapse of Kurz's governing coalition a week ago.

In Belgium, a general election is taking place alongside the European vote, while Lithuanians will vote in the second round of their presidential election.

Britain is taking part in the vote even though it is planning to leave the bloc, after the government missed its March 29 deadline to approve divorce terms. Its EU lawmakers would lose their jobs as soon as Brexit happens.

Sunday promises to be a long day and night for election watchers – the last polls close at 11 p.m. in Italy but the European Parliament plans to begin issuing estimates and projections hours earlier with the first official projection of the makeup of the new parliament at 11:15 p.m.

As the dust settles on four days of elections, European leaders will begin the task of selecting candidates for the top jobs in the EU's headquarters in Brussels. The leaders meet for a summit over dinner Tuesday night.

Current European lawmakers' terms end July 1 and the new parliament will take their seats in Strasbourg the following day.

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The European Parliament elections could have a major impact on the face of the EU in coming years, given the strengthening of radical populist, nationalist parties on both the right and left of the political spectrum, a majority of whom loathe the organization and its bureaucratic and wasteful conduct.

The composition of the European Parliament, which has its headquarters in Brussels and Strasbourg, is determined once every five years in elections that up until recently have been considered either boring or bizarre. As with the Eurovision song contest, the old parties would enlist celebrities and colorful and provocative figures alongside inexperienced politicians, in the hope of garnering voters' attention. But the more Europe grew and became established, and the more the authority of the European Parliament expanded, the less European voters were interested in the continental body.

The old order begins to crack

In the first elections for European Parliament in 1979, when the organization counted nine countries as members, some 62% of those eligible to vote took part in the election. In the most recent elections in 2014, with the organization comprising 28 countries, only 42% of eligible voters showed up to the ballot box. Voter turnout in some of the newer EU member countries in Central and Eastern Europe was even lower, and in some cases, the lowest ever recorded for an EU country. In Slovakia, just 13% of eligible voters took part in the election. In the Czech Republic, voter turnout was 18% and in both Poland and Romania, it was 23%. In Portugal, the Netherlands and Britain – just two years before the Brexit referendum – voter turnout stood at under 40%. Despite the fact that the European Parliament is the only democratic tool that allows EU citizens to have some form of a direct say on what goes on in Brussels, it is still seen as a rubber stamp for the despotic and exorbitant bureaucratic mechanism that dictates to Europeans from Cyprus to Finland how to live, without regard for the day-to-day challenges those countries face.

The current election campaign appears to be different from its predecessors. The events of the last five years have shaken Europe to its core: The migrant crisis, which came to a head in 2015, created a deep social and political divide – not just between Western Europe, which prides itself on multiculturalism and secularism,and Eastern Europe, which puts the emphasis on its national and Christian identity – but also within the countries themselves, where the differences between the "natives" and the "migrants" and the residents of the periphery and the elites have grown more prominent. These increasing tensions have led to the dissolution of the old establishment parties, regardless of whether they are conservative, social democrat or socialist, and the significant strengthening of populist parties on both the Right and the Left united in their opposition to the idea of a "United States of Europe."

Populists on the Right want the EU to return to the days of the common market and maybe give up on the euro while they're at it. Populists on the Left see the EU as the culmination of the capitalist nightmare. In light of their significant growth on the political fringes in national elections held in recent years in Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Hungary, Poland and Greece, the current election campaign in the European Parliament is not just a campaign for the future of the union, as it has been in the past, but a campaign for its very existence.

Macron wants to take control

In addition to all of this, Europe is still finding it difficult to contend with the trauma of Brexit. Britain was not supposed to be a member of the EU by this point. It was supposed to have abandoned ship some two months ago. But the Brits have yet to decide how they want to leave the union, whether entirely while maintaining close economic ties, or not at all. And because Britain has asked and received an extension until fall, when it is supposed to declare which direction it is headed, its citizens will be among the first to vote in the elections for European Parliament.

If this was not confusing enough, polls show the U.K. party that is known as "Brexit" has a significant lead over its opponents in the race for European Parliament.

If and when Britain leaves the EU, its representatives will also leave the European Parliament, and the number of delegates in its ranks will shrink from 751 to 705. But it seems that even this is unlikely to change the balance of power in the parliament's ranks, according to the polls. To date, the European Parliament has been dominated by a coalition of conservatives and socialists, which divided its members' among the positions of power in the European Commission, which is the government of the EU. The past five years have seen a conservative EU president working alongside a socialist foreign policy chief. But the hegemony of these "establishment" parties, which only contributed to the sense of distance between Europe's citizens and the union, is predicted to meet its end. This is due to the growth of populist parties and the establishment of a new bloc of centrist parties at the initiative of French President Emmanuel Macron.

Macron, who is trying to push the EU toward speedy and far-reaching reforms aimed at establishing joint institutions that would stop the nationalist drift across the continent, hoped to see a repeat of his resounding victory in the French presidential elections and the National Assembly in Paris, particularly through the establishment of the centrist La République En Marche! bloc. The "yellow vest" popular protests put a poke in his wheel and Macron has found himself dealing with more pressing issues at home.

According to French opinion polls, Macron's party could end up tying in the European elections with Marine Le Pen's National Rally party (formerly the National Front) and maybe even coming in second in the race.

Nevertheless, last week, the French president succeeded in hosting the representative of a few parties from the west of the continent that could – after the European Parliament elections – host a joint centrist party that would seek to lubricate the union's wheels and keep it moving forward. Such a bloc could, for the first time in the history of the European Parliament, break up the two largest parties' monopoly over the body. But it will not constitute the deciding factor because the expected distribution of seats will require the establishment of a coalition of conservatives, centrists and socialists in order to achieve an absolute majority.

Representatives from the liberal factions of the current European Parliament have joined Macron's "Renaissance" list, as have representatives from the ruling socialist government in Portugal, Italy's former social democratic ruling party and the Spanish centrist Ciudadanos party. The head of Macron's Renaissance list, veteran diplomat Nathalie Loiseau, has gone on the attack against her future conservative partners, in particular those from Germany, who under Chancellor Angela Merkel have stalled the reforms that Macron is interested in.

Merkel, who has already announced she will not run for re-election, has been asked by several senior members of her party to lower her profile in this election campaign. Once the strongest woman in Europe and the world, Merkel has become something of a burden for conservatives in Germany. Many of them hold her responsible for the European crisis that resulted from her push to open the continent's borders to a mass wave of refugees and migrants.

Working toward a weakened EU?

According to various polls and research carried out in recent months, the immigration problem is poised to be the top issue in the European vote, including in countries that did not take in a large number of migrants, like France, for example. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is one of the figures that would like to make the upcoming European elections a referendum on the issue of immigration. He has been sidelined by the European establishment and its conservative partners over his adamant opposition to the absorption of immigrants and its "continuing damage to the foundations of democracy." Orbán's Fidesz party, which enjoys an absolute majority in Budapest, has had its membership in the conservative faction in Hungary's government frozen. The prime minister is now looking for other allies, foremost among them Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, a man Orban has called "the most important person in Europe today."

Salvini brings with him a substantial dowry: the other far-right European group known as the Europe of Nations and Freedom, among its members are the Freedom Party of Austria, the Netherlands' Party for Freedom and France's National Rally. The faction is expected to make significant gains in the upcoming European elections.  Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini. Orbán would like to establish an alliance between the Europe of Nations and Freedom and the European conservatives, in order to break apart the conservatives' historic alliance with the socialists. But that is not going to happen. The conservatives see these parties as a return to the nationalist and fascist "demons of the past" and the end of Europe and democracy. Furthermore, these parties are stealing too many voters away from conservatives.

Orbán was invited to the White House this week for a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump. The previous U.S. administration boycotted Orbán and the current White House is not exactly rushing to embrace him either. But two weeks ahead of the European Parliament elections, Trump has given Orbán the warmest of welcomes, and not for nothing: Trump wants to see the right-wing nationalist parties in Europe grow in strength, because he believes this will allow for the bolstering of the European identity at the expense of EU's aspirations of becoming an economic and diplomatic superpower. For its part, Moscow also supports those same parties out of a desire to weaken the EU. It seems the battle for Europe is also being waged outside of its territorial borders.

Israel should follow the European Parliament elections with interest. The expected retirement of EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, who has become an unwelcome figure in Jerusalem due to her conduct vis-à-vis Israel, will not necessarily result in positive change. The EU's foreign policy mechanism will continue to be hostile toward Israel, as will the majority of the European Parliament. But in its last term, Israel's allies, mainly from the nationalist right-wing parties, succeeded in promoting quite a few initiatives that have been to our benefit. While Israel does not officially have ties with many of these nationalist right-wing parties, given the existence of problematic streams among their ranks, the formation of new coalitions after the elections could keep the unwanted extremists out.

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