GZERO Europe

Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden, shares his perspective on European politics from Stockholm.

What’s the European reaction to the Hamas terror attack against Israel?

Well, the first reaction is obviously, the European foreign ministers were gathering, they had an extraordinary meeting by Zoom, as well, to express support for Israel, solidarity, understanding that Israel does have, no question about that, the right to defend itself. But also saying that there is also international humanitarian law and international law otherwise, and concern that the fighting that we will see, that it's going to have immense humanitarian and human consequences, and the fears that this, in its turn, will have different political consequences in the region and perhaps wider. This is on the doorsteps of Europe - that might be difficult to handle. Then, another bit of questioning, was it right to have the Israel-Palestine issue on the back burner both in the US and Europe during the last few years? Probably not. Could this have been prevented? We'll never know if that could have been the case. But clearly, this is an issue that has to be on the agenda one way or the other after the more acute face of the rather horrible war that we now see after the terror attack.