The European Union has reached an agreement to impose sanctions on violent Israeli settlers, breaking a long-standing impasse on the matter, although some see it as only a minimal advancement. On Monday, Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief, emphasized that “violence and extremism carry consequences.” Despite this progress, there remains a lack of consensus among the EU’s 27 member countries on implementing more stringent trade sanctions.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot announced that the EU is targeting major Israeli organizations and their leaders who are responsible for supporting extremist and violent activities in the West Bank. He described these actions as severe and unacceptable, urging their immediate cessation. While the complete list of sanctioned individuals and entities has not been disclosed, it reportedly excludes two extremist Israeli ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who were sanctioned by the UK last June for inciting violence against Palestinian communities.
The resolution was facilitated by Hungary’s new pro-EU government, which lifted a previous veto on the sanctions that had been in place under former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. In addition to targeting settlers, the EU will also be imposing sanctions on leading figures within Hamas, according to Kallas. Meanwhile, Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar criticized the EU’s decision as arbitrary and politically motivated, arguing that it unfairly targets Israeli citizens and entities based on their political views.
While these measures impact a small group of settlers, they fall short of the more aggressive actions some EU member states were advocating for. Both France and Sweden have called for tariffs on products imported from illegal settlements, stating in a joint paper that the EU needs to intensify its pressure on Israel to halt its settlement policies. Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard suggested that imposing tariffs on these products is the most feasible action.
Under the current EU-Israel association agreement, goods from the occupied territories are excluded from preferential terms, though trade is not entirely banned. Implementing a ban on products would require unanimous agreement among the 27 EU member states, while tariffs could be enacted with a majority vote, providing a potentially more accessible route for those seeking to increase economic pressure on Israel.