Katz slams Borrell for saying he called for displacement of West Bank Palestinians
FM calls EU top diplomat’s statement a ‘blatant lie,’ after tweeting IDF ops in Tulkarem, Jenin are ‘war in every sense’ to be handled like Gaza, including ‘temporary evacuation’
Foreign Minister Israel Katz on Thursday slammed European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell for accusing him of seeking to “displace people from the West Bank” as the Israeli military conducts operations there.
“This is a blatant lie,” Katz tweeted. “I oppose the displacement of any population from their homes.”
Katz, in a Wednesday tweet, had called the operations in Jenin, Tulkarem and elsewhere a “war in every sense” to be handled “exactly as we deal with the terror infrastructure in Gaza, including the temporary evacuation of Palestinian civilians.”
Borrell, at an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Thursday, called for an end to the West Bank operation, and assailed Katz’s comments.
Speaking about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Borrell said “it is still more worrisome” that Katz had called “to displace people from the West Bank, doing more or less the same thing that they did with the people in Gaza.”
International organizations say about 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been internally displaced since the war there broke out 10 months ago.
Israeli military actions in Tulkarem, Jenin and several other areas are far more limited in scope, and there is no apparent plan to move populations.
The UN estimates that some 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced by the war, and IDF assessments in July found that some 1.9 million people are residing in the Israeli-designated “humanitarian zone.”
Israel has said it uses evacuation orders as one of the ways it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities in Gaza, and stresses that the Hamas terror group uses noncombatants as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
At the Thursday meeting, Borrell also indicated he would support EU sanctions on “some Israeli ministers that have been launching some hate messages” toward Palestinians. Though he did not name any ministers, multiple reports said far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir could find themselves among those targeted.
The IDF early on Wednesday launched a large-scale operation in the West Bank city of Tulkarem. Troops were also operating in the city of Jenin and the Far’a camp near Tubas as part of the operation. Overnight, Israeli forces killed five Palestinian gunmen who were hiding in a mosque in Tulkarem, including a local terror leader, according to the army.
Borrell has frequently found himself at loggerheads with Israel and Katz since the Gaza war broke out on October 7, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill nearly 1,200 people and take 251 hostages.
