BRUSSELS: European Union foreign ministers will on \u200cMonday explore whether there is enough support for new measures to curb trade with Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, according to diplomats and officials.<\/p>\n
The discussion will be based on a confidential paper by the European Commission that floats three different options \u2014 an import licensing system, prohibitive tariffs or a ban, a senior EU diplomat and a European official said.<\/p>\n
The EU has long struggled to take major decisions on Middle East policy because of deep and longstanding divisions among its 27 member countries, particularly on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.<\/p>\n
But pressure from member \u200cgovernments to take \u200caction on settlements has grown in recent months \u200cbecause \u2060of increasing violence by \u2060Israeli settlers and frustration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s government, which has expanded settlements. In May, the EU imposed sanctions on four entities and three individuals over what it described as serious and systematic human rights abuses against Palestinians in the West Bank.<\/p>\n
In a July 2024 advisory opinion, the International Court of Justice said Israel\u2019s occupation of Palestinian \u2060territories and settlements in the West Bank are illegal \u200cand that states should take steps to \u200cprevent trade or investment relations that help maintain the situation.<\/p>\n
Israeli Foreign Minister \u200cGideon Saar last year described a push by some European governments \u200cto implement the advisory opinion as \u201cshameful\u201d.<\/p>\n
UN bodies and most countries have found Israel\u2019s settlements in the West Bank to be illegal. Israel rejects this, viewing the territory as disputed and saying a Jewish presence has existed there for thousands \u200cof years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think what you will see on Monday is a discussion on the options, and \u2060we will get \u2060a bit of a picture of where everybody is,\u201d said the diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential internal deliberations.<\/p>\n
Diplomats said they did not expect a formal decision on any particular measure on Monday.<\/p>\n
Divisions over the issue also extend to how any decision could be taken.<\/p>\n
Some diplomats say banning trade with the settlements would require a qualified majority \u2014 at least 15 EU states, representing 65 percent of the bloc\u2019s population. But the Commission\u2019s paper suggests it believes a ban could require unanimous support, a bar that would make a decision highly unlikely.<\/p>\n
European Commission spokesperson Paula Pinho has confirmed that a paper has been shared with member countries but declined to comment on its contents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BRUSSELS: European Union foreign ministers will on \u200cMonday explore whether there is enough support for new measures to curb trade with Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, according to diplomats and officials. The discussion will be based on a confidential paper by the European Commission that floats three different options \u2014 an import licensing …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":100210,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100198"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100211,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100198\/revisions\/100211"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}