The European Union intends to recover the influence lost in recent years in the Middle East and is working on a strategy to stabilize Gaza and resurrect the peace process with a view to underpinning the two-state solution. Among the measures that the foreign ministers of the Twenty-seven will examine at the meeting next Monday is, for the first time, the possibility of adopting sanctions against the terrorist group Hamas and against the Israeli settlers responsible for acts of violence in the West Bank. This is stated in an internal memo drawn up by the EU's External Action Service (SEA, for its acronym in English) to which La Vanguardia has had access and which has been distributed to European capitals ahead of the meeting.
Hamas is one of the twenty-three groups currently recognized as terrorists by the EU, which created its own blacklist of entities following the 9/11 attacks, with financial consequences for its members. After the terrorist attack on Israel two months ago that claimed the lives of 1,200 people, both the United States and Japan expanded sanctions against people linked to Hamas, as well as its financial operators, but so far, despite the pressure from the Hebrew State, the EU had not moved.
Germany, France and Italy have advocated for action in this regard and the internal debate has progressed. For the first time, the document that the high representative of the EU's Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, has sent to the ministers opens the door to adopting sanctions "against Hamas and other terrorist groups" and raises the possibility of creating a specific regime dedicated to first, to attack its financing and the narrative of the conflict.
In view of the serious deterioration of the situation in the West Bank - "it's a pressure cooker", said Borrell a few days ago in an interview with this newspaper -, the EU External Action Service proposes to "explore" possible measures in response to settler violence in the region, for example through the ban on granting visas to "extremists" responsible for attacks on Palestinian civilians or the application of the Union's general sanctions regime for human rights violations humans The aggravation of the climate of tension in the West Bank – in the form of sometimes deadly attacks, disappearances and acts of intimidation – has led this week the German Government to request that the EU consider the adoption of sanctions against the settlers responsible for attacks, as already adopted by the United States and as Belgium has defended for weeks in different forums.
The adoption of any restrictive measure of this kind requires a unanimous decision of the Twenty-seven, which explains why, given the different positions on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Union has so far not been able to take any decision on this sense, hence the importance of Berlin's condemnation of the violence against the Palestinians of the West Bank. European Foreign Ministers will also analyze various initiatives to be able to strengthen the role of United Nations agencies and the International Criminal Court in the region, as well as to support the discredited Palestinian Authority and stabilize the arrival of humanitarian aid in Gaza
