Europe’s most senior diplomat will call for sanctions on two far-right Israeli ministers, as the EU battles to rescue its credibility on the Middle East.
At a meeting of the EU’s 27 foreign ministers on Thursday, Josep Borrell will make the case for sanctions against Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, two far-right government ministers, whose inflammatory statements and behaviour have drawn international condemnation.
Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister, caused outrage with a recent visit to the al-Aqsa mosque, also known as the Temple Mount, a site that is sacred to Muslims and Jews. The ultranationalist minister, who is seeking to disrupt ceasefire talks, said he went to pray, in violation of the status quo that permits only Muslims to pray, while others can visit.
Ben-Gvir has also called repeatedly for the cutting off aid and fuel supply to Gaza, a position he reiterated earlier this month.
Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, also caused outrage earlier this month when he said it might be “justified and moral” to starve 2 million people in Gaza in order to free the remaining Israeli hostages, who were seized in the 7 October attacks by Hamas on Israel.
In apparent response to these statements, Borrell tweeted on 11 August: “While the world pushes for a ceasefire in #Gaza, Min. Ben Gvir calls for cutting fuel & aid to civilians. Like Min. Smotrich sinister statements, this is an incitement to war crimes. Sanctions must be on our EU agenda.”
A few days later, in response to further Israeli settler attacks on a West Bank village, he said: “I confirm my intention to table a proposal for EU sanctions against violent settlers’ enablers, including some Israeli government’s members.”
Borrell, who has repeatedly urged the Israeli government to stop the escalating settler attacks, is expected to call for sanctions at a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels on Thursday. No formal proposal will be tabled and EU officials expect Hungary and the Czech Republic – two of the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s staunchest allies – to veto the plans.
Nonetheless, EU sources think the proposal is worth pursuing, for its own sake and in part as an attempt to repair the bloc’s battered international credibility on the Israel-Gaza war.
“The aim is to really call it out [Israeli ministers’ behaviour] and to show the EU tries to keep its credibility and that we don’t have double standards,” a source said.
Unlike the war in Ukraine, where the bloc (barring Hungary) has shown considerable unity, views on the Israel-Gaza conflict have often sharply diverged.
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EU member states voted for, against and abstained on UN security council resolutions calling for an immediate humanitarian truce in Gaza last October and on large-scale delivery of aid to the territory in December.
As well as advertising the EU’s divisions, the no votes and abstentions in New York also put EU countries in a different camp from many countries in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and South America, fuelling charges of double standards when compared with the EU’s forceful condemnations of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Borrell is said to be concerned about how the EU is perceived around the world.
While the EU is often divided on the Middle East, it has imposed sanctions on extremist Israeli settlers and organisations implicated in human rights abuses and violent attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.