The European Union began the process of sanctioning two extremist Israeli ministers but consensus was lacking to implement any such step, the bloc’s foreign policy chief Joseph Borrell told reporters in Brussels on Thursday night.“The process has been launched,” Borrell said, adding that in the end, the EU foreign “ministers will decide. It’s up to them.”
He spoke after he put the issue on the table 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 Bezalel Snotrich 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 expressed” at the meeting, Borrell said. “Basically, I wasn’t entirely successful, but a process has started” with technical committees, he explained.
The Israeli ministers he wants to sanction, Borrell said, “have been launching unacceptable hatred messages against the Palestinians, and proposing things that go clearly against international law” 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 at that site.
Ben Gvir has pushed for Jews to also be allowed to pray on the Temple Mount, a step which 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 that 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 stated.
Ireland’s Foreign Minister Micheal Martin told reporters before the meeting that he backed Borrell’s proposal. He also said he wanted to push the EU to re-examine its diplomatic ties with Israel in the aftermath of the International Court of Justice 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, he stressed.
Martin said he took seriously the ICJ advisory opinion. It “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,” Martin said.
Who will govern in Gaza?
He described the IDF’s ten-month military campaign to destroy Hamas in Gaza as “a humanitarian catastrophe” in light of the suffering it wrought on the Palestinians as he called for a “long-term strategy” to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ireland is one of four European countries who this year unilateraly recognized Palestinian statehood.
Borrell said that the foreign ministers discussed reviving the EU Border Assistance Mission, which had 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.
Borrell clarified, however, that 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 May of this year.
The IDF now controls that border crossing and has insisted that it must remain at that border, while Hamas has insisted that it must leave that crossing. There has been some proposal to place a local Palestinian force at the border that was not connected to either Hamas or the PA.
EUBAM would not operate if the border is given over to a local Palestinian force. This “has to be done in accordance and with the participation of the Palestinian Authority, not of some Palestinians, no, of some Palestinians, no, the Palestinian Authority. And this is a requirement also from the Egyptian side,” Borrell said.
If Israel would agree to that, “then we will be there,” he said.
Borrell said that 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, Borrel said.
“She shared her assessment of the horrific humanitarian situation in Gaza,” Borrell 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 in southern Gaza in July was one of the lowest recorded since the beginning of the war,” he said.
He spoke of his concern about violence in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and along Israel’s northern border as he described a situation in which the war lacks any kind of an end date or end game.
“Six months ago, we were still talking about the day after. 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 is imminent by just informing us that it is not yet, but is for tomorrow,” Borrell said.
There is contempt for the suffering of Palestinians by both Israel and Hamas, he said.