Western Delay Tactics Are Buying Time for Israel to Finish Genocide in Gaza

Tazeen Hasan illustrates how EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas’s rejection of sanctions against Israel reflects the West’s broader delay tactics — enabling genocide in Gaza through calculated inaction.

Last week, European Union foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas made headlines — not for action, but for inaction. Faced with overwhelming evidence that Israel has violated its human rights commitments in Gaza, Kallas declined to endorse even one of the ten sanctions options proposed by her own team. Her refusal, even as children in Gaza starve in food lines and entire families are buried under rubble, lays bare a grim reality: Western governments are not stopping the genocide. They are managing it — by stalling, diverting, and buying time for Israel to complete what leading scholars and international legal experts have called an unfolding genocide.

As Gaza endures catastrophic conditions, with more than 850 Palestinians killed while queuing for food aid since May alone, the West postures with language of “concern” but avoids measures that would interfere with Israel’s military campaign. Even as Kallas acknowledged the “catastrophic” situation, she maintained that the EU would only “keep options on the table” — not act on them. The result? A moral abdication that Amnesty International rightly called a “cruel and unlawful betrayal.”

Across the Atlantic and beyond, the pattern is unmistakable. One by one, Western leaders signal sympathy, but their actions — or lack thereof — serve one function: to delay genuine accountability, giving Israel the space to escalate its war on Palestinians.

Take Germany, where key political figures reportedly justified their backing of Israel by saying it was doing their “dirty work” — eliminating Iranian-linked leadership. Or France’s Emmanuel Macron, who abruptly pulled out of a high-profile peace conference that was expected to culminate in symbolic recognition of the Palestinian state. Even that symbolic step was too much.

In Canada, once touted as a champion of human rights, former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor and new PM Mark Carney recently endorsed a version of Palestinian statehood that must be Zionist — a contradiction in terms that erases the very identity and self-determination of Palestinians.

While Gaza’s children starve and their families are incinerated, the West issues travel bans on a few Israeli ministers for settler violence in the West Bank — a grotesque misdirection. It is akin to sanctioning a pickpocket while turning a blind eye to the armed robbery unfolding next door. These moves are not about justice. They are about optics — about appearing engaged, while ensuring nothing interrupts Israel’s campaign in Gaza.

Only a handful of governments have dared to move beyond empty rhetoric. Spain has called for suspending the EU-Israel Association Agreement — a treaty that provides Israel with preferential trade terms. Ireland, though vocal in its concern, remains hesitant to propose concrete measures. The rest remain immobilized by their own political cowardice or worse, complicit in the prolonging of Palestinian suffering.

Western governments must be held to account for more than words. History will remember not only Israel’s crimes, but the silence and stalling of its allies. For now, each moment of hesitation is not neutrality — it is complicity. While the West waits, Gaza dies.