The EU finally put a price tag on Israel’s West Bank policies

Israeli settlers at the re-establishment of the settlement of Sa-Nur in the West Bank, 19 April 2026

David Issacharoff reports in Haaretz on 12 May 2026:

It finally dawned on Europe: Israel’s expansion of settlements in the West Bank, while backing Jewish terrorism, must come with a price tag.

Sanctions approved by the European Union’s foreign ministers on Monday hit close to home in Jerusalem, targeting figures and groups directly tied to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and the heart of the settlement enterprise.

Unlike previous rounds aimed largely at individual violent settlers, the latest sanctions are structural, targeting, according to Haaretz reporting, organizations and their leaders active in settlement construction, like Amana; the displacement of Palestinians through legal battles, like Regavim; and grassroots efforts encouraging Israelis to move deep into the West Bank, like Nachala. They rely heavily on fundraising, including from abroad. Sanctions that threaten those financial channels could have a major impact.

Too little, too late? After more than a year of inaction over Israel’s deliberate destruction of Gaza and its people, this is finally a meaningful step, one that could pave the way for broader measures now being pushed by several member states, including ending free-trade benefits for West Bank settlement goods or banning such imports altogether.

A special shoutout goes to Hungary, whose new government, led by Péter Magyar, supported the measures and lifted the perennial Viktor Orbán “blackmail” veto, showing within just three days of taking office how consequential the nationalist leader’s downfall was to Israel’s ethnonationalist agenda.

In their response, Israeli leaders once again revealed their levels of shamelessness, victimhood and zeal when it comes to the West Bank.  Netanyahu blasted European politicians for being “coerced by their radical constituencies,” as if he himself were never beholden to extremists, while complaining that this was happening while Israel was “fighting for civilization” and doing Europe’s “dirty work” in Iran, despite European leaders opposing what has turned out to be a costly and failing war.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who himself co-founded one of the sanctioned groups, Regavim, called for annexing the West Bank “this evening” in response.  But Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli took it several steps further, accusing the EU of “raw antisemitism” and Nazi-like tendencies.  “Brussels, the EU’s own capital, and Belgium, which just this week filed criminal charges against Jewish mohels, are rapidly turning into Judenrein zones,” he said, invoking the Nazi term for areas “clean of Jews.”  He went on to claim that for EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, “a Jew-free zone in Brussels isn’t enough. She demands that Judea too must be made Judenrein,” referring to the biblical name for much of the West Bank.

All this was said despite the near-daily settler pogroms carried out with total impunity, often alongside Israeli army forces, part of an ongoing project of ethnic cleansing of Palestinian communities.

Jewish victimhood, as expressed in Chikli’s unabashed response, shows no contradiction with being the perpetrator. The reactions of Israeli officials, which also include calls for “strategic” operational measures, demonstrate why further sanctions are needed, as they lay out clearly the Netanyahu government’s most precious and contentious raison d’être: annexing the West Bank after five decades of apartheid-style rule and emptying it of as many Palestinians as possible.

With the impact of the EU’s measures still to be assessed, they were nonetheless a clear message to Israel. They should be even clearer to those vying to replace Netanyahu, especially Naftali Bennett, who himself was once closely allied with many of these sanctioned figures as a former settler leader.

Israel’s leaders need to understand that there is no sustainable path for Israel to remain part of the so-called “civilized” world while continuing, as members of the Israeli government openly advocate, to turn the West Bank into a Palestinian-free zone.

The EU sanctions are an essential reminder that policies rooted in the disregard and oppression of human rights carry consequences. If this is a path Israeli governments – under Netanyahu or otherwise – continue to choose, then they must also be prepared to bear the cost: deliberately pushing their country into deeper international isolation, war and suffering.

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