EU foreign ministers agreed on Monday to a set of sanctions aimed at Israeli residents in the occupied West Bank.
The sanctions were put on hold due to protests by Hungary led by former Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who lost last month’s election to rival Peter Magyar, paving the way for the bloc to move forward.
The measures were drafted in response to violence against Palestinians amid the expansion of settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Violence escalated in the Palestinian territories following October 7 terrorist attacks by the militant Palestinian group Hamas in southern Israel, which killed 1,200 people. In 2026, About 45 Palestinians, including 11 children, have been killed in the West BankAccording to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
What did EU and Israeli officials say about West Bank sanctions?
“EU foreign ministers have approved imposing sanctions on Israeli settlers over violence against Palestinians,” the bloc’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas wrote on Monday.
“They also agreed on new sanctions on key Hamas figures,” he said, without naming any individuals. “Extremism and violence have consequences.”
“It’s done. The EU is today imposing sanctions on the main Israeli organizations and their leaders guilty of supporting the extremist and violent colonization of the West Bank,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot wrote on social media.
“These most serious and intolerable acts must stop without any delay,” he said.
Barrot said that the EU is imposing sanctions on “key leaders” of Hamas and that Hamas is a “terrorist movement that must be disarmed and excluded from any involvement in the future of Palestine.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said that “Israel strongly rejects the decision to impose sanctions on Israeli citizens and organizations.”
“The EU has decided, in an arbitrary and capricious manner, to impose sanctions on Israeli citizens and entities because of their political views and without any basis,” he wrote on X.
What do EU sanctions on West Bank settlers mean?
The sanctions target three settlers and four settler organizations, whose identities have not yet been publicly disclosed.
The EU has in the past targeted extremist Israeli West Bank residents over violence against Palestinians, including in a sanctions package in 2024 that imposed asset freezes and travel bans on four individuals and two entities.
Some EU countries have called for tougher measures, such as banning products from Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmar Steinergar called for the imposition of tariffs on such imports as well as sanctions on “the Israeli ministers who are running these settlements”.
The agreement reached on Monday begins the EU legislative process on imposing sanctions. These measures are scheduled to come into effect at a later date.
While the EU is moving forward on imposing sanctions on settlers, there is no consensus among member states on broader measures against Israel, such as curbing trade ties.
Edited by: Alex Berry