Josep Borrell: ‘…No Force Can Stop Netanyahu…’

The European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, Friday, lamented no force, including that of the United States, can stop Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his war on Gaza and Lebanon.

“What we are doing is putting all the diplomatic pressure to stop the fire, but no one seems to have the power to stop Netanyahu, neither in Gaza nor in the West Bank,” Borrell told reporters while attending the UN General Assembly.

Borrell backed a French and US initiative for a 21-day ceasefire in Lebanon that Israel has ignored as it intensifies its strikes on Hezbollah targets.

Borrell said Netanyahu had been clear that the Israelis would not stop until Hezbollah was destroyed, just as they have been in the nearly year-long war in Gaza against Hamas.

“If the interpretation of destruction is the same as what happened with Hamas, then we are going to a long war,” Borrell added.

US failure

The outgoing EU foreign policy chief again called for diversifying diplomatic efforts away from the United States, which has unsuccessfully tried to reach a truce in Gaza that would include the release of detainees.

He added that the United States cannot be relied upon alone to reach a ceasefire, as it has tried several times and failed to do so.

“I do not see that it is ready to start a new negotiation process that could lead to another Camp David,” he said, referring to the talks held at the US presidential resort in 2000, in which former President Bill Clinton unsuccessfully sought to broker a historic agreement to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Netanyahu pledged in a speech to the United Nations on Friday to achieve Israel’s goals against Hezbollah, which began launching attacks on Israel following Hamas’s attack on October 7.

Since Monday, the Israeli army has launched the most violent and extensive attack on Lebanon since the beginning of the confrontations with Hezbollah about a year ago, killing 726 people and wounding 2,173 others, while its war on Gaza has continued since October 7, leaving more than 137,000 Palestinians dead and wounded.

  • CrossFireArabia

    CrossFireArabia

    Dr. Marwan Asmar holds a PhD from Leeds University and is a freelance writer specializing on the Middle East. He has worked as a journalist since the early 1990s in Jordan and the Gulf countries, and been widely published, including at Albawaba, Gulf News, Al Ghad, World Press Review and others.

    Related Posts

    Israel Violates Syria With 11 Air Raids

    Israel will not leave Syria alone! Israeli raids, Wednesday evening, struck the Scientific Research Institute in the Barzeh neighborhood in Damascus according to Sana, the Syrian news agency.

    Israeli warplanes went on to strike the Hama military base with more than 11 air raids, Sana pointed out.

    The Israeli Channel 12 added that an additional target was the T4 military airport in rural Homs.

    The Israeli raids, almost daily, started months ago on Syria and its capital, Damascus, and increased after 9 December 2024 when there was a change of regime in the country.

    Residents in Damascus said they heard loud explosions after the intense air raids that targeted the scientific building in Barzeh.

    But before that Israel has been conducting deadly air raids, literally mounting to thousands on Syria for years under the now ousted Baath regime of President Bashar Al Assad.

    Israel then claimed it was targeting Hezbollah and Iranian bases but there were many deaths and injuries.

    Israel occupied most of the Syrian Golan Heights after the 1967 Arab-Israel war, and took advantage of the fall of the regime and occupying the country’s buffer zone and declaring the collapse of the 1974 disengagement agreement between the two sides.

    Continue reading
    Israel Kills Journalist and His Family in Gaza

    Journalist Mohammad Saleh Al Baradawil, his wife and children, were killed in the early morning hours of   Tuesday morning as Israeli occupation planes targeted his flat in Khan Younis, south of the Gaza Strip.

    Sources point out that Israeli planes targeted the apartment of the journalist and his family in the Emirates neighborhood in West Khan Younis where additional martyrs and injured were reported.

    Baradawil is the third journalist to have been assassinated after Israel resumed its genocidal war on Gaza on 18 March, 2025 after the end of the first stage of the ceasefire agreement reached with the Israeli government.

    The latest killing brings the number of Palestinian journalists targeted by Israel at 209.

    With American support Israel is carrying out a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip it started soon after 7 October, 2023 with the number of those killed standing at 164,000, mostly women and children while 14,000 still buried under the rubble in the Gaza Strip.

    Continue reading

    You Missed

    Trump, Iran And The ‘Nuclear Fight’

    Trump, Iran And The ‘Nuclear Fight’

    Israel Violates Syria With 11 Air Raids

    Israel Violates Syria With 11 Air Raids

    15 Martyred: Why Does Israel Kill Ambulance Men?

    15 Martyred: Why Does Israel Kill Ambulance Men?

    Burning Muslim Civilization

    Burning Muslim Civilization

    Israel Kills Journalist and His Family in Gaza

    Israel Kills Journalist and His Family in Gaza

    ‘Its as Bad as Ever in Gaza’ – UN Workers

    ‘Its as Bad as Ever in Gaza’ – UN Workers