Afrasianet - After months of procrastination, postponement and disruption, EU foreign ministers have reached a decision to impose new sanctions on 3 Israeli settlers and 4 settler organizations, and held a separate meeting to impose similar sanctions on leading figures in the Hamas movement in order to push off the expected Israeli resentment and suggest equality.
This is the third package of sanctions imposed by the European Union after Brussels followed in the footsteps of former US President Joe Biden's administration in punishing settler violence in 2024.
The current president, Donald Trump, was quick to veto the measure hours after his inauguration in January 2025, encouraging Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to suspend European sanctions, which were passed only after the latter lost his presidency.
The problem with these sanctions is that they are a small and incomplete little, not only because they are lean in terms of freezing foreign financial assets and banning travel to EU countries, but mainly because they are a reflection of clumsy policies The core of the dilemma behind illegal settlement strategies is untouched in the eyes of international law, but they are sponsored, funded, protected, and encouraged by successive Israeli governments of different ideological identities.
It is no wonder that the punishing Israeli settlement leaders themselves have ridiculed these European sanctions, some of whom have considered them a "badge of honor," and most of them have emphasized the simple and bright truth: they will not impede settlement in any way, but will more likely bring in more foreign donations to promote settlements in general, and those outposts that are built on land It was also not surprising that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu resorted to reprimanding the European Union from the first angle, blaming Brussels for imposing sanctions when Washington and Tel Aviv undertook the "dirty work" on behalf of Europe "during the fight for civilization against extremist jihadists in Iran and elsewhere."
The second aspect was the declaration of the EU's "moral bankruptcy", a line of rebuke that National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir went so far as to raise the familiar and repeated scarecrow: that the EU is "anti-Semitic".
The data on the ground, which the European Union does not overlook, say that settler violence is nothing less than a systematic tool adopted by the occupying power to intimidate Palestinians and expel them from their lands and properties, thus facilitating the establishment of settlement outposts, and this is the goal of the participation of the occupation army in encouraging and protecting the crimes of the settlers.
The Israeli judiciary has been silent about holding them accountable. In just 40 days of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, there have been 378 incidents of settlement violence in the West Bank, involving 148 Palestinian communities, 8 killed and more than 200 Palestinians injured or injured. Unless sanctions target the core of the settlement problem, they will remain lean and reflect only clumsy policies.
