The former Palestinian delegate to the EU, Leila Shahid, has told EUobserver that she left diplomacy behind in order not to betray her people, and that she is furious with the EU’s response to the ongoing conflict.
The 74-year-old Palestinian representative from 2006-2015 is a thoughtful woman. As the Lebanon-born daughter to Palestinian parents walks into the restaurant in Paris’s 16th arrondissement to meet the Foreign Press Club, the journalists waiting for her immediately take a stand. She is especially well-known and respected in France, even among those who disagree with her.
Since 7 October, her stance is, however, perceived as more radical than ever. Especially as she refused to condemn Hamas directly after the attack.
“I haven’t changed at all,” she told EUobserver after the conference. “I am still advocating for my people. I have, however, abandoned diplomacy in every sense.”
Shahid has been advocating for the Palestinian cause since her youth; in the 1970s she joined Fatah, founded by Yasser Arafat and one of the major political factions within the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). She has since then represented Palestine in the Netherlands, Denmark, France and, ultimately, from 2005 to 2010, in the European Union.
“I left diplomacy behind because I couldn’t betray my people anymore. The EU diplomats and the EU, in general, have no interest in peace in the Middle East. There are some exceptions, like the Scandinavian countries, but all in all: the EU is only interested in their own commercial interests,” Shahid told EUobserver.
She said she believes that Europe is trapped by guilt for what they did, or what they let happen, to the Jews during World War II.
![Rima Hassan in her Brussels office: '[It's] not merely a lack of courage; it is a criminal policy to advocate for a two-state solution today'](https://static.euobserver.com/2026/07/DSC_0345-2-2400x1602.jpg)
