European Union foreign ministers will discuss a possible ban on import of goods produced in Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, the bloc’s foreign policy chief said on Monday.
“Everybody agrees that the situation in the West Bank is really intolerable,” E.U. High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas told reporters at the start of a meeting in Brussels, AFP reported. (The European Union refers to Judea and Samaria as the “West Bank.”)
“What is happening in the West Bank is actually making it more and more impossible that the two-state solution ever can come into effect,” the foreign policy chief continued.
“There have been a lot of asks and requests from the member states regarding the ban of the trade with illegal settlements,” Kallas said. “Let’s see if these options that have been provided now will have a stronger push from member states.”
The European Commission, the E.U.'s executive arm, last week circulated a paper outlining three options to restrict trade with Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, Euronews reported.
The council’s legal service told member states the measures could be adopted as a trade instrument, requiring the support of at least 15 countries representing 65% of the E.U.'s population under qualified majority voting, rather than the unanimity required for foreign policy decisions.
Backing from countries such as Italy could give supporters enough votes to clear that threshold.
Twenty of the E.U.'s 27 member states, led by France and Sweden, had urged the commission to draw up proposals for trade restrictions, according to Euronews.
Last month, Israel cut ties with Kallas’s office after she reportedly likened Jerusalem’s policies in Judea and Samaria to the treatment of Black South Africans under the apartheid regime.
Kallas “has for some time now been acting obsessively and with blatant unfairness toward the State of Israel,” Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said.
“Therefore, as the foreign minister of the State of Israel, I have no choice but to sever all contact with Ms. Kallas until she retracts the blood libel she directed at the world’s only Jewish state, which is also the only democracy in the Middle East,” he added.
