Belgium is leading a group of European Union member states to push Brussels into ending all trade with Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories. Backed by Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden, the initiative—revealed in a leaked letter—comes just days before the EU is set to debate imposing some form of sanction on the country.
EU foreign ministers will meet Monday, June 23rd to review the present EU-Israel association agreement. They will be informed by documents produced by the team of EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas. Echoing previous actions taken against Russian leaders over the Ukraine conflict, they could also pursue sanctions against prominent Israelis. A clear problem with this is that while Russia invaded its neighbour, Israeli actions since the October 7th pogrom are defensive in character.
The nine-country offensive against ‘settlers’ (and even ‘violent settlers’) could well be performative, given the difficulty in clearly categorising who is supposed to have done what. As Israel’s largest trading partner, the EU accounted for €42.6 billion in trade last year. What proportion of this is from Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories? No one involved in writing the letter is in a position to identify the precise amounts, but this doesn’t matter. The idea is to look tough on Israel—possibly as a Trojan Horse for increasing the international isolation of the Jewish State.
If ‘successful’, the campaigning EU members would push the European Commission into coming up with a plan of punitive measures—although the letter does not suggest a schedule for this. The nine ministers have signed off on an anodyne statement, declaring that
This is about ensuring that EU policies do not contribute, directly or indirectly, to the perpetuation of an illegal situation.
With Belgium pretending to take an interest in ensuring European trade policy follows international and humanitarian law, the real target—once again—is Israel. This represents a growing division in the EU, between powers such as Germany who are happy to hide behind the Jewish State (and feign supporting it while calling for restraint), and a more hostile bloc represented by ‘the nine.’ Next week’s trade meeting could sharpen such divisions, that is, if the spineless ministers that didn’t sign the letter don’t end up switching sides.
