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The European Union won’t impose possible sanctions on Israel now over the war in Gaza, but hasn’t taken them off the table yet either, the bloc’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on Monday.
Ten days after the US-brokered ceasefire came into effect, the 27 European foreign ministers who gathered in Luxembourg said they considered the situation too “fragile” to fully remove pressure on Israeli authorities.
“The ceasefire has changed the context, that is very clear for everybody. However, unless we see real and sustained change on the ground, including more aid reaching Gaza, the threat of sanctions remains on the table,” Kallas said at a press conference.
Other prerequisites include access to the Strip for journalists and humanitarian aid workers and the registration of NGOs to be unrestricted.
“We need to see really the improvement of humanitarian aid reaching Gaza. We need to see also Palestinian (tax) revenues to be given to Palestine or released by the Israeli authorities. We need to see journalists and humanitarian aid workers getting in. We need to see also the international NGOs registration to be unrestricted,” Kallas said.
In the face of the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza and Israel’s blockade on aid deliveries to Gaza, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed three measures last month.
The first was the partial suspension of the association agreement between the EU and Israel, the freezing of bilateral aid with the exception of support to civil society and the Holocaust remembrance centre Yad Vashem, as well as individual sanctions against two Israeli far-right ministers and violent settlers in the West Bank.
But these proposals failed to materialise as member states have very different views on these issues.
