Israel cuts ties with EU foreign policy chief Kallas over apartheid comparison

Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar has cut all ties with the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs over her reported comparison of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to South Africa’s former apartheid system.

In a post on X on Thursday, Saar claimed that the EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, has been “acting obsessively and with blatant unfairness” toward Israel.

“Recently, it was published that during her visit to Mexico, she compared Israel to the racist apartheid regime that existed in South Africa,” Saar wrote, adding that Kallas had issued “no denial, clarification, or response” regarding her “severe statement.”

As a result, Saar concluded that as Israel’s foreign minister, “I have no choice but to sever all contact with Ms Kallas until she retracts the blood libel she directed at the world’s only Jewish state, which is also the only democracy in the Middle East.”

In response, Kallas stressed that the EU’s position is that the so-called two-state solution is the only viable option for peace in West Asia, and that “The EU has condemned the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank that make it increasingly difficult to get to that goal.”

She, however, called for dialogue and engagement, saying “the EU and Israel have a lot that binds us.”

“Dialogue is the foundation of diplomacy, especially when differences arise,” Kallas wrote on X.

Last week, Belgium-based platform Euractiv reported that Kallas compared Israel’s crimes against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza to apartheid-era South Africa during a closed-door meeting while visiting Mexico in May.

Israel plans to fund extremist settlers in occupied West Bank with $1.89mn: Report

The Israeli regime reportedly plans to fund an extremist Jewish settler group in the occupied West Bank with $1.89 million.

Violence by Israeli forces and settlers has escalated across the occupied West Bank since October 2023, when Israel launched the genocidal war against Gaza, including killings, abductions, home demolitions and settlement expansion.

Since then, at least 1,155 Palestinians have been killed, and about 11,750 others injured, and nearly 22,000 arrested in the occupied West Bank.

An Oxfam analysis of UN data confirms that in just three years, Israeli forces and settlers have killed more Palestinians in the occupied West Bank than in the preceding 17 combined.

Nearly 46,000 Palestinians were also forcibly displaced from their homes and communities as part of a deliberate Israeli policy of ethnic cleansing.

Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich also moved to authorize the construction of 2,000 new settler units on Palestinian land, openly declaring the intent to “establish clear facts on the ground.”

Smotrich explicitly admitted that these projects and continuous encroachments on Palestinian rights exist to destroy any possibility of Palestinian statehood.

More than 700,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East al-Quds.

The international community views the settlements as illegal under international law and the Geneva Conventions due to their construction on occupied territories. The UN Security Council has condemned Israel’s settlement activities in several resolutions.

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