EU agrees in principle to impose sanctions on violent West Bank settlers
Union’s 27 members also agree to add further sanctions against Hamas — and will act against Palestinian terror group first to avoid equating sides

BRUSSELS, Belgium — European Union foreign ministers agreed in principle on Monday to impose sanctions on Israeli settlers who attack Palestinians in the West Bank and to add further sanctions on members of Palestinian terror group Hamas.
The decision marked the first time that the EU’s 27 member countries agreed to sanction violent Israeli settlers, following in the footsteps of the United States and Britain.
“A solid compromise has been agreed at the working level and I hope that this will be continued until full adoption soon, but the political agreement is there,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told reporters after the ministers met in Brussels.
It was not immediately clear when new sanctions would take effect.
“Today, we have approved, unanimously, the sanctions against the violent settlers that harass the Palestinians in the West Bank,” Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares told reporters after the meeting.
While much international attention has focused on Hamas’s massive cross-border assault from Gaza on Israel and the war that it opened, European officials have also expressed increasing concern about rising violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
The EU created a sanctions regime specifically to target Hamas following the terror group’s October 7 attack that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Israel responded with a military campaign to topple the Hamas regime in Gaza, destroy the terror group, and free the 253 hostages of all ages that terrorists abducted from Israel during their assault.
The EU will impose additional Hamas sanctions before sanctioning Israeli settlers, diplomats said.
That sequencing was important for EU members close to Israel, such as Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic, which wanted to make clear they were not equating the two groups.

Hungary had put up the strongest resistance to sanctions on violent settlers, but recently changed its stance, diplomats said.
Borrell said countries that had previously blocked the proposal had now decided to abstain and the list of those who would face sanctions now needed to be rubber-stamped. They face travel bans and asset freezes.
The struggle over the proposed sanctions reflects broader divisions on the Middle East, with some EU countries strongly backing Israel, while others lean more towards the Palestinians.
Last week, the US imposed sanctions on three Israeli settlers and two illegal outposts implicated in West Bank violence. It followed earlier sanctions against four extremist settlers in an executive order signed by US President Joe Biden in February. The UK also announced sanctions against a number of settlers the same month.
The two outposts targeted in the latest round of US sanctions were Moshe’s Farm, also known as Tirza Valley Outpost, established in January 2021; and Zvi’s Farm, near the Halamish settlement.
The inclusion of entire outposts in the sanction list marked an escalation by the Biden administration in its crackdown on settler violence, after years of pushing Israel to do more to address the largely unchecked phenomenon.
Settler violence spiked after the October 7 massacre carried out by the Hamas.
In October, the Shin Bet was reported to have warned the government that the increase in settler attacks may cause an eruption of violence committed by Palestinians.
The West Bank has been under Israeli military rule since the 1967 Six Day War, while the Palestinian Authority has controlled parts of the territory since 1994. About 490,000 settlers live among approximately three million Palestinians in the West Bank, in settlements that are widely considered illegal under international law.