EU foreign ministers back sanctions over West Bank violence

European Union foreign ministers reached an agreement on Monday on new sanctions targeting violent Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, as well as leading Hamas figures, European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said. 

The sanctions package, which targets three settlers and four settler organisations whose identities have yet to be publicly disclosed, had been blocked for months by the previous Hungarian government which lost an election last month.

European governments have raised concern about a rise in reports of settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. 

"It was high time we move from deadlock to delivery," Kallas said in a post on X. "Extremisms and violence carry consequences," she added. 

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on X the EU had "chosen, in an arbitrary and political manner, to impose sanctions on Israeli citizens and entities because of their political views and without any basis."

"Equally outrageous is the unacceptable comparison the European Union has chosen to make between Israeli citizens and Hamas terrorists. This is a completely distorted moral equivalence," he added.

There was no immediate response from Hamas.