EU ministers agree on sanctions targeting violent West Bank settlers

European Union (EU) foreign ministers reached an agreement on Monday on new sanctions targeting violent Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, as well as leading Hamas figures, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said.

The sanctions package, which targets three settlers and four settler organisations whose identities have yet to be publicly disclosed, had been blocked for months by the previous Hungarian government, which lost an election last month.

European governments have raised concerns about a rise in reports of settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

“It was high time we move from deadlock to delivery,” Kallas said in a post on X. “Extremisms and violence carry consequences,” she added.

Reacting to the development, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on X that the EU had “chosen, in an arbitrary and political manner, to impose sanctions on Israeli citizens and entities because of their political views and without any basis.”

“Equally outrageous is the unacceptable comparison the European Union has chosen to make between Israeli citizens and Hamas terrorists. This is a completely distorted moral equivalence,” he added.

There was no immediate response from Hamas.

The occupied West Bank has been gripped by almost daily violence since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023, involving Israeli troops and settlers.

There has been a surge in deadly attacks by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank since the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran on February 28, Palestinian officials and the United Nations have said.