Rights groups cheered. Allied governments took note. For a moment, it looked like a turning point. It isn’t.
Even as London was patting itself on the back, EU member states and the European Commission were quietly moving to buy Israeli weaponry — a reminder that Europe’s enthusiasm for accountability rarely survives contact with its own defence contracts.
One recent example is the agreement between Greece and Israel for Achilles Shield, a comprehensive Israeli system meant to protect against missiles, aircraft, and drones.
Greece is not the first NATO member to buy anti-aircraft defence systems from Israel, but its purchase includes radar systems and a much wider array of weapons.
In all, the deal is valued at €3.05 billion.
Meanwhile, the EU is working to develop a deep partnership with Israel to produce a wide array of similar defence systems.
Last week, in a Brussels meeting room, Shimrit Maman, the head of the Israel Space Agency, sat down with the EU’s Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation, Ekaterina Zaharieva.
The topic: joint projects in AI and robotics. The meeting barely made headlines — but it should have.
Call it strategy. Call it panic. Either way, a more aggressive Russia and a less dependable Washington have pushed Brussels into Israel’s arms — fast.
And panic, as any policymaker should know, makes for bad long-term decisions.
The result is a European Union pulling itself in two directions at once: debating sanctioning Israel, but deepening its dependence on Israeli technology and weapons.
The politics of that contradiction will only get messier.
Increasing Ties, Increasing Tensions
Israel has seen its military sector, which is intimately intertwined with its tech sector, grow enormously in recent years.
The close relationship between the military, the academy, and the private sector in Israel makes innovating and marketing arms and military equipment a much more streamlined process.
This is aided by its close partnership with the United States, which often foots the bill for Israel’s “innovation” while leaving the results entirely in Israel’s proprietary hands.
More worrisome is the fact that Israel often proves the value of its latest weaponry by using it on Palestinian or Lebanese targets, often civilians.
Israel thus has some of the most desirable weaponry on the global market.
Its recent effort to establish a relationship with the Greek administration in Cyprus is part of a strategy to increase Israeli access to the European market while simultaneously increasing tensions with Türkiye, thereby complicating Ankara’s relationship with its EU partners.
The Israeli government hopes that its deepening ties with its Greek Cypriot counterpart will help it gain access to the EU’s Security Action for Europe (SAFE) programme, thereby increasing its revenue sources for further military development.
While Israeli leaders fret over Israel’s declining image in the United States, and the potential for weakening support from Washington, it is trying to secure the flow of capital and technical partnerships for its defence industry through legislation that will be difficult for future American governments to undo.
In Europe, it is pursuing a parallel strategy, trying to lock the EU into a defence partnership by creating a dependency on Israeli weaponry and technology.
Brussels’ fear of Moscow and the lack of confidence it has in Washington create an opening for Israel.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the Union Address in Strasbourg this week exemplified the problem.
“Europe has chosen to forge its own path,” she said. “This is a Europe that stands up for each other,” she said, citing Ukraine and Greenland, neither of which are in the EU.
“Europe is there for Europeans,” she said. “And that in the cold fragility of today’s world, only Europe can provide true sovereignty to Europeans.”
This was a clarion call for a more robust and independent security structure for Europe, free of dependence on the United States and accounting for the security not only of EU member states, but of all of Europe.
There is no doubting this is a reaction to Russia as well as the even stronger perception of the United States as an unreliable ally that could, in the not-too-distant future, even turn into an adversary.
Yet von der Leyen is clearly aware that weaning European governments off their dependence on the US is a complicated, time-consuming process.
The infrastructure for significantly expanding and modernising defence manufacturing, not to mention the advanced technical know-how the United States has provided for decades, will take time to supplant.
That’s where Israel comes in.
It’s Only Business
The British government’s decision to sanction products from Israeli settlements and to focus its ire on settlement expansion and the concomitant violence around it inadvertently provides a roadmap for the European Commission.
It’s tempting but perilous and should be avoided.
The EU may well follow the United Kingdom’s example and ban settlement products. But, as with Britain, this will have an unnoticeable effect on the Israeli economy.
The real power in the UK stance was in its citing the International Court of Justice’s opinion that the Israeli occupation is illegal and the accusation levelled by Foreign Minister Ed Miliband that Israel was engaging in ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.
But that wasn’t the headline; the ineffectual sanctions were.
The EU will be tempted to target the settlements narrowly and hope it can do so while continuing to expand its defence partnerships with Israel.
Some of the seeds of that expansion were planted last week in Lower Saxony in Germany, where the Israeli companies Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Aurelius Capital have agreed to purchase a Volkswagen factory and refurbish it, turning it into a factory to build components for the Iron Dome missile defence system.
It’s the first step toward Berlin purchasing the system from Israel, as the factory will make everything except the interceptor rockets themselves.
This, along with the Greek deal, is just a part of the growing network of Israeli partnerships with European member states on defence.
According to POLITICO, “dozens of entries in the European tender database reviewed by POLITICO show Israeli firms becoming go-to suppliers for military communications, surveillance and electronic warfare”.
Israeli firms are frequently awarded contracts without competing bids being solicited, an unusual practice that heightens the EU’s dependence on Israel, since any such systems would have to be upgraded and repaired only by Israel.
That danger was enough that the European Court of Justice ruled, in 2025, that EU contracting authorities must avoid what they referred to as “lock-in”, meaning that they were expected to find ways to avoid depending on any one supplier for crucial needs.
A key part of that is competitive bidding for contracts.
Yet, as with Israel’s routine violations of its agreements with the EU on human rights issues, the European Commission seems to be looking the other way when it comes to Israeli defence systems.
The pressure on the EU to violate its own rules is growing, as the United States’ erratic behaviour and the fear generated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine press Europe to arm itself in ways it has not done in decades.
Partnering with Israel may seem like a good way to wean European member states off their dependence on American military equipment and technology.
After all, Israel develops much of its tech in partnership with American corporations, but its smaller economy prevents it from becoming the domineering master Washington has.
Such partnerships will become increasingly controversial, as they already are, among Europeans disenchanted with Israel over its war in Gaza.
The British government’s decision to sanction Israel does not come out of a change of heart in London.
It comes in response to a sharp turn in public opinion regarding Britain’s role in facilitating Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians.
Some European countries are already prepared to roll back their partnerships with Israel. Spain and Ireland are the most obvious. The Israeli government knows its position is precarious.
In the United States, it is mobilising its supporters in Washington to pass legislation that will entangle the American and Israeli militaries and intelligence services so deeply that it will take enormous political effort and a great deal of time to pull them apart.
Except for Germany, Israel does not have the same level of influence in Europe, and the EU’s structure and that of most member states make such a strategy much harder.
Instead, the Israeli government is aggressively pursuing contracts that capitalise on heightened anxiety about Russia’s war in Ukraine in the EU to create defence dependence.
Israel is not concerned that this runs counter to public opinion in Europe, like in Britain.
However, this issue should concern the European Commission and Ursula von der Leyen, especially as her own country, Germany, faces accusations at the International Court of Justice of complicity in the Gaza genocide through its arms supplies to Israel.
EU member states can develop their defence and tech sectors independently and are already capable of defending themselves to a considerable extent. The impulse to keep outsourcing military spending to politically compromised partners also compromises Europe.
The need to move away from dependence on the United States is indisputable, particularly given American hostility to the European Union. But deeper involvement with Israel opens a different set of problems, of which Germany’s ICJ dilemma is just the tip of the iceberg.
Never mind the post-Holocaust implications of Berlin and Brussels helping to underwrite the destruction of the Palestinian people, under German Commission leadership.
For a European Commission so dedicated to saving Ukraine, the irony must be overwhelming.
Israel is not facing an existential threat from Hamas like Ukraine is from Russia. It’s the exact opposite, which is the problem.
What’s good for Germany, at least in the eyes of the German government, is not the same thing as being good for the EU.
Some recent history is in order.
In 2024, Ursula von der Leyen was forced to abandon plans for a European air defence shield because too many objections to involvement with Israel made it impossible.
Now, it seems, she is trying to make the same mistake again.
Photograph courtesy of the European Parliament. Published under a Creative Commons license.
