In carefully crafted official statements, the European Union presents itself as an honest broker in the Middle East. In reality, however, the EU''s 27 governments have been engaged in a long process of accommodating Israel''s occupation of Palestinian territories.

Journalist David Cronin interrogates the relationship and its outcomes. A recent agreement for ''more intense, more fruitful, more influential co-operation'' between the EU and Israel has meant that Israel has become a member state of the Union in all but name. Cronin shows that rather than using this relationship to encourage Israeli restraint, the EU has legitimised actions such as the ill-treatment of prisoners and the Gaza invasion.

Concluding his revealing and shocking account, Cronin calls for a continuation and deepening of international activism and protest to halt the EU''s slide into complicity.