European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has canceled a planned trip to the Jewish state, after Foreign Minister Israel Katz said he would not be allowed to make the visit official, Ynet reported on Thursday.
Borrell had sent a letter to Israel’s Foreign Ministry announcing his intentions to visit Israel on Sept. 14 and 15. However, Jerusalem rejected those dates and called on him to coordinate a visit in late October, which would come after his term in Brussels concludes.
The European politician has been a harsh critic of Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza and policies toward the Palestinians in general, at times making incendiary remarks that have drawn rebukes from Israeli officials.
Late last month, Borrell said that he had asked the E.U. bloc’s member states if they would consider imposing sanctions on Israeli ministers.
Diplomats told Reuters that it was unlikely that all the bloc’s 27 member states would agree to levy such sanctions, as would be required for the measure to pass.
In March, he accused Jerusalem of “provoking famine” in the Gaza Strip, claiming that the Israel Defense Forces was using starvation as a “weapon of war.”
“Gaza was before the war the greatest open-air prison. Today, it is the greatest open-air graveyard,” Borrell claimed in separate comments. “A graveyard for tens of thousands of people, and also a graveyard for many of the most important principles of humanitarian law.”
This drew a rebuke from Katz, who called on Borrell to stop bashing Israel and recognize its right to defend itself.
