EU to blacklist Israeli settlers, after new sanctions on Hamas
EU states are planning to impose for the first time visa-bans and asset-freezes on six extremist settlers on Friday (19 April) in a bid to chill Israeli aggression.
The decision is to be quietly adopted by a "written procedure" in the EU Council, diplomatic sources said — instead of by EU leaders during their summit meeting in Brussels on Wednesday and Thursday or EU foreign ministers meeting next Monday.
The move comes amid a fresh surge in anti-Palestinian violence by Israeli settlers in the West Bank, following the death of a 14-year-old Israeli shepherd.
New sanctions are part of wider diplomatic efforts to curb Israeli aggression in Gaza and to slow settlement expansion in the hope of reviving the two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The US, Israel’s staunch ally, and individual European countries, Belgium, France, and the UK, have already sanctioned violent settlers.
Belgium, France, and the Netherlands, backed by Ireland and Spain, pushed for the EU-level move to increase pressure, amid hints that the concerted Western pushback was just a first round of sanctions if Israeli behaviour didn’t change.
But Israel’s top EU allies — the Czech Republic and Hungary — had delayed the EU move, which was originally proposed last December.
They also lobbied to cut the EU blacklist from the 12 initially-proposed names to six.
Last Friday, the EU blacklisted three Palestinian militant entities — two Hamas brigades and the Al-Quds Brigades — for the use of sexual violence against Israelis in an attack on 7 October.
The extremist settlers and Palestinian fighters are both being sanctioned on the grounds of egregious human rights abuses.
The Hamas units were guilty of "the rape and subsequent murder of female minors, mutilation of corpses as well as genital mutilation," the EU said.
When completed, the process will see the Israeli names added to a global rogues’ gallery that also includes Russian murderers, Chinese torturers, and African warlords, as well as the Hamas rapists.