EU should treat Israeli settlements like Russian-occupied Crimea, says bloc’s top diplomat

The European Union should treat illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank the same way Crimea was treated after Russia invaded the Ukrainian peninsula, the union’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has said. In an interview with The Irish Times, Kallas said European governments should take a similar “principled stance” and back an EU-wide ban cutting off trade coming from Israeli settlements in Occupied Palestinian Territories.Europe would not be taken seriously as long as it remained divided and unable to agree on a response to the actions of Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government and violent settlers, the senior EU politician said. There was broad agreement across all EU states that the expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank and other occupied Palestinian territories were illegal under international law, she said. READ MORE“The question is what do we do about this? If we take the example when Crimea was occupied, then it was very clear, it’s illegal, we don’t recognise this, which means that we stop the trade with any products that come from Crimea,” Kallas said. “We should have the same principled stance – you know this is illegal, everybody agrees – so we should stop trading with Occupied [Palestinian] Territories,” she said. Following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, where troops seized the Black Sea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014, the EU levied economic sanctions on Moscow, which included a ban on trade with occupied Crimea. [ Why is Israel’s E1 settlement plan in West Bank so controversial?Opens in new window ]Kallas, the EU’s high representative on foreign affairs, said the volume of trade coming from Israeli settlements was small, but halting imports would send an important symbolic message. Kaja Kallas being interviewed by Jack Power, Europe Correspondent with The Irish Times. Photograph: Thierry Monasse for The Irish Times A woman walks past a Hebrew-language mural and Israeli flag in the Jewish settlement of Karnei Shomron in the West Bank. Photograph: Amir Levy/Getty Images France this week announced it will push ahead with a national trade ban, alongside the UK and Canada. The move follows similar legislation introduced in Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Ireland, and will increase the pressure on the EU to come forward with a common approach. The European Commission, the bloc’s powerful executive branch led by Ursula von der Leyen, is under “very clear” pressure from national governments to table a proposed EU-wide trade ban, Kallas said.Crucially, a proposal banning the import of goods produced by Israeli settlements could be approved as an EU trade measure rather than a foreign policy decision, meaning it would only require the support of a sizeable majority of member states, rather than unanimous agreement. Germany, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovenia oppose sanctioning Israel. Some governments that were opposed to suspending a wider EU-Israel free trade deal were open to cutting off trade from illegal settlements, said Kallas, who chairs regular meetings of the union’s 27 foreign ministers to set policy. Speaking in her Brussels office, Kallas said there would be “pros and cons” to taking a decision on an EU trade ban before key Knesset parliamentary elections in Israel at the end of October.[ What now for the Israel flags flying across the North?Opens in new window ]“We have leverage when we are able to take decisions ... If it is clear that we are divided, then also you know we are not taken seriously,” Kallas said of the EU’s authority internationally. Kallas, who was Estonia’s prime minister before being appointed to the top EU role in 2024, said European institutions “get a lot of bashing” over the failure to sanction Israel during its two-year bombardment of Gaza. The financial lifeline the EU provided to the Palestinian Authority as the administration’s biggest donor was sometimes “overlooked” in that debate, the union’s foreign policy chief said. “We are doing a lot to keep the two-state solution alive,” she added. There were plenty of areas where European governments were in agreement, she said. “We agree on [the] two-state solution. We agree on humanitarian aid not being politicised and getting to the people.”