Are sanctions on Israeli settlers and organisations the best the EU can do?

Since 7 October, Gaza has been facing genocide and Israel is using several tactics to ensure the annihilation of the Palestinian population. The Israeli military continues its widespread bombing campaign, while Israeli settlers on the nominal Gaza border have organised themselves to prevent humanitarian aid from reaching the enclave, purportedly to force Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to prioritise the release of hostages.

Israel’s illegal settlers are protected by the military; their violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank is a prime example of the impunity that the settlers enjoy. As the genocide rages on and news of yet more killings of Palestinians reverberates globally for those who have morally-grounded political awareness, the EU has once again evaded its own responsibility to stop the Israeli genocide, and simply imposed sanctions on Israeli settlers and organisations instead. In essence, there’s nothing wrong with sanctions on this particular violent sector of Israeli society, but did it have to take a genocide for the EU to act on such a simple matter?

According to Euronews, talks about sanctions have been going on for months, hindered by Austria, Germany and the Czech Republic. All of the organisations and individuals listed except one have already been sanctioned by the US, which means that the EU was merely copying the US diplomatic tactic of diverting attention away from Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Baruch Marzel, who is sanctioned by the EU but not the US, was listed for openly calling “for an ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and denies the Palestinians’ right to their own land.”

Is the EU really unaware that Israel is built upon the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people?

And that most of its 700,000 settler-colonists would thus espouse the same extreme political ideology? Does the EU not realise how politically weak its sanctions look, at a time when Palestinian lives are being shredded and mauled in Gaza, by order of Netanyahu?

“What else can we do? We always sanctions individuals and organisations in the same way,” EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell told reporters. Yet, Borrell also said that Gaza is, “The greatest open-air graveyard. A graveyard for tens of thousands of people, and also a graveyard for many of the most important principles of humanitarian law.”

So, Mr Borrell, what else can you do? How about taking a look at the EU’s complicity in the Israeli genocide? The EU-Israel Association agreement? The constant copying of US diplomacy that makes the EU extend imperialist policies? How about recognising that Israel’s settler-colonial foundations extended to military occupation, apartheid and genocide, and all trace their origins back to the 1947 Partition Plan? And what about the EU’s love-affair with the two-state compromise, which has enabled further colonial expansion, totally eliminated the hypothetical Palestinian state and made the EU turn towards illusory state-building in collaboration with Israel and the Palestinian Authority, with nothing to show for it but the genocide in Gaza?

There is much that the EU can do, but won’t do. The bloc is just as enamoured of genocide as Israel and its leaders are.

Are sanctions on Israeli settlers and organisations the best the EU can do?