Israel severs ties with EU top diplomat Kaja Kallas over reported apartheid remark, escalating diplomatic tensions.
JERUSALEM: Israel’s foreign minister said Thursday that he was severing all contact with the European Union’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas over reported remarks in which she allegedly compared Israel to the apartheid regime that once ruled South Africa.
Diplomatic relations between Israel and the EU have come under heavy strain since the Gaza war erupted in October 2023, as well as over violence by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank.
On Thursday, Gideon Saar accused EU foreign policy chief Kallas of “acting obsessively and with blatant unfairness” towards 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 on X.
“However, to date, no denial, clarification or response has been issued by her regarding this severe statement.
“Therefore, as the foreign minister of the State of Israel, 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,” he said.
According to European news outlet Euractiv, Kallas made the remarks during a closed-door meeting with Mexican government officials while on a visit to Mexico last month.
Saar’s comments also came after Kallas said this week that the EU would explore options for restricting trade with Israeli settlements following calls from several member countries.
Kallas also noted that a number of EU countries had proposed sanctions against Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, although no consensus has yet emerged.
Any EU sanctions have to be signed off by all 27 member states, and staunch supporters of Israel have opposed such measures.
Calls to blacklist Ben Gvir grew after he published video last month of himself mocking bound activists seized by Israeli soldiers on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla.
Violence by Israeli settlers in the West Bank has increased since the start of the Gaza war, with rights groups reporting near-daily attacks on Palestinians and their property.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and since then settlement expansion has been a policy under successive Israeli governments.
But it has accelerated significantly under the current coalition government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Excluding east Jerusalem, more than 500,000 Israelis now live in the West Bank in settlements that are illegal under international law, among some three million Palestinians.
