US sanctions on extremist Israeli settlers reveal EU ineffectiveness

The United States’s imposition of financial sanctions on extremist West Bank settlers, a move the EU has tried and failed to agree on since December, has revealed how hamstrung the bloc is in its policy towards Israel.

A small group of pro-Israel countries within the EU that are willing to use their vetoes regardless of the majority view among other member states have made Israel’s staunch ally Washington more easily able than Brussels to take decisions that might affront the Israeli government.

“One or two” countries were still blocking EU sanctions on extremist settlers when they were discussed last week, according to Tánaiste Micheál Martin. They are understood to be Hungary and the Czech Republic.

Those who support the sanctions point out that it is long-standing EU policy to support a two-state solution to the conflict. The surge in displacement and violence against Palestinians by Israeli extremists in the West Bank, one of the areas intended for a future Palestinian state, makes its achievement less likely as well as discrediting moderates who push for peaceful accords, they argue.

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The more restrained step of imposing visa bans on the extremists responsible, taken by the US in December, has yet to be agreed either despite prior talk of a group of European countries including Ireland coming together to do so.

The latest split is over the EU’s aid to Unrwa, the United Nations relief agency that supports two-thirds of Gaza’s population.

The US suspended its funding after Israel alleged 12 employees were involved in the Hamas-led October 7th attacks that precipitated the invasion of Gaza. Within the EU, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Finland, Estonia, Austria and Romania followed suit.

The commissioner in charge of the file, Oliver Varhelyi, declared there would be “robust steps” and “no business as usual” in the EU’s Unrwa aid, including an audit of its control systems, and that the future of funding would depend on an investigation.

Some misunderstood his phrase “no funding foreseen until the end of February” to mean that the EU had suspended payments, though those familiar with European Commission-ese read it to mean that no payments were due until then anyway.

The bloc’s foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell, clarified in a statement that “funding has not been suspended”, noting that two million people “desperately need” the aid.

As Israel’s biggest trading partner the EU is better placed to impose pressure than most. In Brussels this week Taoiseach Leo Varadkar called for a review of the EU-Israel Association Agreement on the grounds of a breach of its human rights clause, which would put free trade arrangements into question.

The EU’s record so far suggests that however appealing this might have sounded to a domestic audience, the idea has little chance of getting off the ground. The fact that the US appears to be more free to take actions that might upset Israel suggests that the EU has little prospect of using what leverage it has.

Many observers have pointed out that the actual achievement of a two-state solution would require asking, and pressuring, the Israeli government to do things it does not want to do. The EU fancies itself as a potential broker for peace in the region but its internal divisions raise questions over whether it could play that role.

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