Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said this week he would suspend contact with the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, over reports that she compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians with South Africa’s former apartheid system.
The diplomatic row follows reports by European news outlet Euractiv that Kallas made the remarks during high-level talks with Mexican officials in May. Citing unnamed officials, the outlet reported that the EU diplomat privately likened Israel’s policies in Gaza and the occupied West Bank to the racial segregation regime that ruled South Africa until the mid-1990s.
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end of list So what does this row mean for relations between Israel and the EU? Here is what we know.
What happened?
In a post on X on Thursday, Saar said he had “no choice but to sever all contact” with the bloc’s high representative until she retracted what he described as a “blood libel” against Israel. Kallas responded on the social media platform, stressing the EU’s commitment to dialogue and to a two-state solution but making no attempt to deny the media report.
The failure to retract the comments did not go unnoticed by Saar, who concluded that silence “speaks for itself”.
The row comes as Israel faces ongoing legal proceedings in international courts over accusations of genocide and war crimes in Gaza. Despite deep internal divisions among member states, analysts say the diplomatic fallout from Kallas’s remarks will remain symbolic.
“The episode reflects a deeper structural problem: Kallas and the European External Action Service (EEAS) have increasingly been sidelined, caught between member states that retain sovereign control over foreign policy and a European Commission that has progressively expanded into geopolitical territory under [Ursula] von der Leyen,” Nele Anders, a Berlin-based analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), told Al Jazeera.
The EEAS is the EU’s diplomatic service, headed by Kallas.
“EU-Israel relations will continue to be shaped by individual capitals, meaning that the relationship is fractured, but far from unravelling in any collective sense.”
What is the EU’s relationship with Israel?
The EU’s policy towards Israel has been marked by ambiguity, reflecting the challenge of upholding the bloc’s commitment to human rights while maintaining a special partnership.
As EU leaders gathered for the second day of a European Council summit to approve a new budget on Friday, Irish prime minister Micheal Martin told reporters the EU’s failure to take action against Israel reflected poorly on the bloc.
“The credibility of Europe is undermined by a failure to take a strong stance in terms of what has been a breach of international law … war crimes on a number of fronts,” he told reporters.
He also called Saar’s decision to sever ties with Kallas “unacceptable”.
Ireland has been among the most active proponents of EU-level measures against Israel, including, most recently, a proposal to sanction far-right Israeli government ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich over allegations of degrading treatment of pro-Palestinian activists detained by Israeli forces on board a Gaza-bound aid flotilla.
The EU has so far been unable to reach the unanimous agreement needed to approve the sanctions, however. A deadlock also thwarted attempts to approve a proposal on restricting trade with the settlements, which are considered illegal under international law as they are on Palestinian-owned land.
Has the EU taken any action against Israel?
Since Israel accelerated its illegal settler project in the West Bank following the start of its war on Gaza in October 2023, the EU – which formally supports a two-state solution – adopted limited sanctions against specific settler organisations in 2024 and again in May this year.
Yet, the EU-Israel Association Agreement – the framework that provides the legal basis for relations between the EU and Israel – still stands despite much pressure. Signed in 1995 and active since 2000, the pact positions the EU as Israel’s largest trading partner and establishes cooperation on areas including investment, research, innovation and education.
Ireland, Spain and Slovenia have led efforts within the EU to suspend this agreement, but these have so far stalled due to resistance from countries like Germany, Italy, Hungary and the Czech Republic.
United Nations experts have also called on the EU to suspend the agreement, citing a ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) stating that member states must refrain from assisting Israel in maintaining an illegal situation in the occupied Palestinian territory.
Anders, at ECFR, said measures such as the suspension of the Association Agreemen…
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