Europe is moving, and in one direction. Within days, Belgium has begun preparing to recognize the State of Palestine, the European Union has readied trade measures against goods from illegal Israeli settlements, and Germany, Israel's staunchest friend in Europe, has pressed it in public over Gaza. The steps are separate. They point the same way.
In Brussels, Foreign Minister Maxime Prevot said he had told his Cabinet to prepare a decision to recognize Palestine. "I don't know if we will be ready by Friday, but it will be on the table soon," he told the broadcaster VRT. His governing partners in the CD&V party pushed for immediate recognition, arguing that Hamas's move to dissolve its Gaza government had removed one of the last reasons to wait.
In the same week, the European Commission said it would publish an options paper on trade measures aimed at products made in illegal Israeli settlements, to go before EU trade ministers on 10 July. The initiative, announced by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and pushed by the bloc's foreign-policy chief Kaja Kallas and several member states, targets an occupation the International Court of Justice declared illegal in a July 2024 opinion that also called for the settlements to be dismantled. Roughly 500,000 settlers live in the occupied West Bank and another 250,000 in occupied East Jerusalem, by the count of the Israeli group Peace Now.
Even Berlin, which has shielded Israel through the war, has shifted its tone. In Tel Aviv, Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul urged Israel to stop choking Gaza aid with "petty bureaucratic hurdles" that delay relief for 2 million people, and to release the tax revenues it withholds from the Palestinian Authority. He restated that there is "no military solution" and warned that hollowing out the Palestinian Authority "could create a vacuum that other, more radical forces might fill," while still affirming Germany's support for Israel's security.
The backdrop to all of it is a genocide. That is the position of the Republic of Türkiye, the finding of United Nations experts and major rights groups, and the charge the International Court of Justice is weighing in the case South Africa brought under the Genocide Convention. Israel's war on Gaza has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians, by Palestinian authorities' count, and its strikes have continued through a ceasefire that was meant to hold.
For Türkiye, none of this is new ground. Ankara recognized the State of Palestine in 1988 and has spent the war pressing Western governments to match their words with pressure on Israel, over the killing in Gaza, the withheld revenues, the settlements the world calls illegal. Europe arriving there now, capital by capital, is a shift Türkiye has long argued for. Whether it hardens into policy, a recognition signed, a trade measure passed, is the test the coming weeks will set.