Recent provocations by government hardliners Ben Gvir and Smotrich have sparked an international outcry.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has proposed sanctioning Israeli ministers for hate speech and incitement to war crimes, in another attempt to toughen the bloc’s response to Israel’s war in Gaza.
“I have launched the procedure to ask member states whether they want to include in our sanctions list certain Israeli ministers who have been sending hate messages, unacceptable hate messages against Palestinians and proposing things that are clearly against international law and are incitement to commit war crimes,” Borrell told reporters on Thursday morning.
He was speaking ahead of an informal meeting of the bloc’s 27 foreign ministers in Brussels, where a decision on sanctions against the Israeli ministers cannot be formally taken and is unlikely to garner unanimous support.
Although Borrell did not name the ministers in question, he has recently expressed outrage at the statements and actions of Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, both of whom belong to the far-right, ultra-nationalist wing of Netanyahu’s coalition government.
Ben-Gvir sparked international condemnation when he recently visited the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, in contradiction to the status quo maintained by the Israeli authorities. He also proposed building a synagogue on the holy site.
“The EU strongly condemns the provocations of Israeli Minister Ben-Gvir, who, during his visit to the holy sites, advocated the violation of the status quo,” Borrell said in a statement on X on 13 August.
Smotrich has been repeatedly condemned for his plans to promote illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and for his statements in which he said it might be “moral” to starve two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
“While the world is pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza, Minister Ben Gvir is calling for a cutoff of fuel and aid to civilians. Like Minister Smotrich’s sinister statements, this is incitement to war crimes,” Borrell said in another statement on X.
“Sanctions must be on the EU agenda.”
Borrell’s proposed sanctions also target Israeli ministers who have encouraged or enabled violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank.
The EU has sanctioned a handful of individuals and entities responsible for attacks on Palestinian communities in April, but violence in the West Bank persists.
In June, Smotrich dismissed international concerns about continued settlement activity in the West Bank as “preaching” and has continued to support settlement projects since then. He has also withheld tax revenues intended for the Palestinian Authority, the government body that partly administers the occupied West Bank.
This article is originally published on observatoiredeleurope.com
