The European Union began the process of sanctioning two Israeli extremist ministers on Thursday, but consensus was lacking to implement it, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told reporters in Brussels.
The EU foreign “ministers will decide,” he said. “It’s up to them.”
Borrell spoke after he proposed the issue at an informal meeting of the EU’s 27 foreign ministers that deal with Ukraine, Turkey, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Sanctions can only be leveled against Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir with the agreement of all 27 EU states. At the meeting, it was clear that a common agreement was lacking on the matter.
“All sorts of views were expressed” at the meeting, Borrell said. “Basically, I wasn’t entirely successful, but a process has started” with technical committees.
The two Israeli ministers “have been launching unacceptable hatred messages against the Palestinians and proposing things that go clearly against international law,” he said, and their words are an “invitation to commit war crimes.”
At issue, in particular, has been Ben-Gvir’s push to overturn the status quo on the Temple Mount, known as al-Haram al-Sharif, which allows members of all faiths to visit but only Muslims to pray there.
Ben-Gvir has pushed for Jews to also be allowed to pray on the Temple Mount, a step that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected.
Borrell, without naming Ben-Gvir, accused him of “playing with fire” by proposing building a synagogue on the Temple Mount.
In advance of the meeting, Foreign Minister Israel Katz said his office was “working tirelessly with our European allies to prevent anti-Israel decisions” at the EU meeting.
“Our message is clear: In a reality where Israel faces threats from Iran and its proxy terror organizations, the free world must stand with Israel, not against it,” he said.
Before the meeting, Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin said he backed Borrell’s proposal. He also said he wanted to push the EU to reexamine its diplomatic ties with Israel in the aftermath of the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion last month that Israel’s “occupation is illegal” and out of his concern that the IDF was responsible for “war crimes” in Gaza.
“It cannot be business as usual,” Martin told reporters. “It’s very clear to us that international humanitarian law has been broken” by Israel with respect to its treatment of the Palestinians.
The ICJ advisory opinion “places obligations on states and on international organizations like the EU to examine its relationship with Israel in the context of its illegal occupation of the West Bank and of Gaza,” he said.
Martin said the IDF’s 10-month military campaign to destroy Hamas in Gaza was “a humanitarian catastrophe” in light of the suffering it wrought on the Palestinians. He called for a “long-term strategy” to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ireland is one of four European countries that this year unilaterally recognized Palestinian statehood.
Borrell said the foreign ministers had discussed reviving the EU Border Assistance Mission (EUBAM), which operated at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza. That mission ceased operation when Hamas violently ousted the Palestinian Authority from Gaza in a bloody coup in 2007.
Who will govern in Gaza?
The EUBAM would only return if the PA was also given control of that crossing, which had been in Hamas’s hands on the Gaza side from 2007 until this May, he said.
The IDF now controls that border crossing and has insisted that it must remain at that border. Hamas has insisted that the IDF must leave that crossing. There have been some proposals to place a local Palestinian force at the border that is not connected to either Hamas or the PA.
EUBAM would not operate if the border is given over to a local Palestinian force, Borrell said. This “has to be done in accordance and with the participation of the Palestinian Authority, not of some Palestinians... and this is a requirement also from the Egyptian side,” he said.
If Israel would agree to that, “then we will be there,” he added.
Borrell said the European Union plans to hold a high-level conference on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September. Officials from Arab states and the United States would also be present, he said.
The EU foreign ministers also heard a briefing from senior Gaza humanitarian coordinator Sigrid Kaag, Borrell said.
“She shared her assessment of the horrific humanitarian situation in Gaza,” he said, adding that “86% of Gaza is now under evacuation order. United Nations activities have been suspended. The amount of humanitarian food assistance that entered southern Gaza in July was one of the lowest recorded since the beginning of the war.”
Borrell said he was concerned about violence in the West Bank, east Jerusalem, and along Israel’s northern border, which he described as a situation in which the war lacked any kind of endgame.
“Six months ago, we were still talking about the day after,” Borrell said. “Today, the only thing that we do is to look for a provisional ceasefire, which we are told is imminent. Every day we are told it is imminent by just informing us that it is not yet but is for tomorrow.”
There is contempt for the suffering of Palestinians by both Israel and Hamas, he said.